Plot flower plot
PlotFlower(lengths, widths, labels, disk = 0.5, max.length, center = NULL, main = NULL, fill.col = NULL, plot.outline = TRUE, label.offset = 0.15, xlim = c(-1.2, 1.2), ylim = c(-1.2, 1.2), uin = NULL, tol = 0.04, cex = 1, bty = "n", lty = 1, label.col = "black", label.font = 3, label.cex = NULL, ...)
| lengths | length of petal outward to extent of circle |
|---|---|
| widths | width of petal |
| labels | petal label outside of circel |
| disk | relative radius of a central donut hole |
| max.length | ... |
| center | center value |
| main | middle value |
| fill.col | fill colors |
| plot.outline | size of plot outline |
| label.offset | label offset |
| xlim | formatting |
| ylim | formatting |
| uin | formatting |
| tol | formatting |
| cex | size of middle text |
| bty | formatting |
| lty | line thickness |
| label.col | label color |
| label.font | label font |
| label.cex | size of label text |
Generate something akin to a rose plot in which the width and length of each petal are directly specified by the user. Or to put it differently, this is somewhat like a pie chart in which the radius of each wedge is allowed to vary (along with the angular width, as pie charts do). As an additional enhancement, one can specify a central disk of arbitrary radius (from 0 to 1, assuming that the plot itself is scaled to the unit circle), in which case the petal heights are always measured from the edge of the disk rather than the center of the circle; if desired, text can be added in the center.
Although this kind of plot may already be well known in some circles (no pun intended), I haven't seen it clearly defined or labeled anywhere, so I'm anointing it an 'aster' plot because its component parts are reminiscent of composite flower morphology.
The 'lengths' dictates how far out each petal extends, 'widths' dictates the (angular) width of each petal, and 'disk' gives the relative radius of a central donut hole. If no widths are provided, all petals will have equal widths. Additional function arguments can also control whether petals are labeled, whether the petal lengths are rescaled to the maximum score or to a user-input score, whether spokes delineating each petal are extended to an outer circle, and more. I also wrote a quick convenience wrapper for creating a legend plot.
Note that the function here is a repurposed and very heavily modified version of the windrose() function contained in the 'circular' package, although sufficiently rewritten so as not to depend on any functionality in that package.
# NOT RUN { # generate some fake data set.seed(1) scores <- sample(1:10) weights <- sample(1:10) labels <- paste(LETTERS[1:10], "X", sep="") # do some plots par(mfrow=c(2,2), xpd=NA) aster(lengths=scores, widths=weights, disk=0, main="Example 1", plot.outline=FALSE) aster(lengths=scores, widths=weights, labels=labels, main="Example 2", lty=2, fill.col="gray", plot.outline=FALSE) aster.legend(labels=labels, widths=weights) aster(lengths=scores, widths=weights, disk=0.5, main="Example 3", center="Hello world") # }