[R] Managing size of plots with many points

[white.denis@epamail.epa.gov]

One approach you might consider is Dan Carr's hexbin function available
in Splus and in the Bioconductor package at www.bioconductor.org.

> What is available to limit obvious overplotting, e.g. with a million
> points?  My primary motivation is to produce plots from R and S-Plus
> that occupy minimal hard drive space without sacrificing visual
clarity.
>   (I've crashed MicroSoft PowerPoint by including plots that are too
big.)
>
> Right now, I can think of three different scenarios:
>
>              1.  Monotonic applications such as a normal probability
plot.
>
>              2.  Lines (or connected dots).
>
>              3.  General scatterplots.
>
> Several approaches have been suggested, and I've implemented an ugly
> algorithm.  However, I believe something better should be available,
but
> I don't even know what words to use in a search.
>
> Ideas?
> Thanks,
> Spencer Graves