Look at the pairs2 function in the TeachingDemos package, this lets you produce smaller portions of the total scatterplot matrix at a time (with bigger plots), you could print the smaller portions then assemble the full matrix on a large wall, or just use it to look at potentially interesting parts.
-- Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D. Statistical Data Center Intermountain Healthcare greg.s...@imail.org 801.408.8111 > -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r- > project.org] On Behalf Of Jocelyn Paine > Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 10:21 PM > To: r-help@r-project.org > Subject: [R] Making plots in big scatterplot matrix large enough to see > > I've got a data frame with 23 columns, and wanted to plot a scatterplot > matrix of it. I called > pairs( df ) > where 'df' is my data frame. This did generate the matrix, but the > plotting window did not expand to make the individual plots large > enough > to see. Each one was only about 10 pixels high and wide. > > I tried sending the plot to a file, with a high and wide image, > by doing > png( "plot.png", width = 4000, height = 4000 ) > but I got these errors: > Error in png( "plot.png", width = 4000, height = 4000 ) : > unable to start device > In addition: Warning messages: > 1: In png( "plot.png", width = 4000, height = 4000 ) : > Unable to allocate bitmap > 2: In png( "plot.png", width = 4000, height = 4000 ) : > opening device failed > > The messages aren't helpful, because they don't tell you _why_ R can't > start the device, allocate it, or open it. The documentation for png > says: > Windows imposes limits on the size of bitmaps: these are not > documented > in the SDK and may depend on the version of Windows. It seems that > width > and height are each limited to 2^15-1. > However, 2^15-1 is 32767, so that isn't the problem here. I tried > various > values for height and width. 2400 was OK, but 2500 wasn't. So it seems > R > can't produce plots that are more than about 2400 pixels square. This > is > with R 2.10.1. > > Why is png failing on big images? Also, what's the recommended way to > make > a file containing a scatterplot matrix when you have lots of variables? > 'pairs' is a very useful function, but obviously one does need to be > careful when doing this, and I don't know what experts would recommend. > Do > you loop round the variables plotting each pair to a different file? I > was > hoping that I could put them all into one very big image and view parts > of > it at a time. > > Thanks, > > Jocelyn Paine > http://www.j-paine.org > http://www.spreadsheet-parts.org > +44 (0)7768 534 091 > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting- > guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.