pictogram
R function for pictograms
Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any major stats software out there providing pictograms. By pictogram, I mean one of those graphics where there are rows of little icons showing a count for each of several groups. This R function aims to get you started making your own.
You specify the following arguments:
- icon - a list of raster images, or a single raster image to be shared among groups
- n - a vector of integer counts, one for ecah group
- grouplabels - a character vector of labels, one for each group
- hicons - maximum number of icons to show in one row before starting the next one, default 20
- vspace - the ratio of vertical blank space between groups to the vertical height of the icons, default 0.5
- labprop - the ratio of width on the left of the axis (for labels), to the width on the right (for icons), default 0.2
- labelcex - the cex parameter for text labels, default 1
Note that when I talk about the "vertical height of the icons", the function will use the icon with the greatest height:width aspect ratio for this. You should avoid using a mixture of icons that differ a lot in aspect ratio, because groups will appear at a glance to be more or less imposing than they really are.
It is up to you to use a package like jpeg or png to read in images as raster arrays and then supply these as the icons.
This function depends on one package: reshape
Things to do:
- Allow for non-integer n, which will show part of an icon at the end of a row.
- Allow more graphical parameters to be passed, like main()
- Create internal vectors "spacing" and "x0" in more efficient ways (not important)
- Consider resizing the raster once prior to plotting (for speed improvements)