Thursday, October 28, 2010

Lattice vs. ggplot2

Both lattice and ggplot2 seem really interesting and worthy of learning. But I only have time to learn one of them, and the choice is not an easy one.

Here is an awesome reference; this blog is generally very interesting; and here is something about the "brew" package.

5 comments:

Richard Careaga said...

I can only give half a recommendation, since I haven't used lattice: ggplot is a package of rare beauty and power. See the author's page of examples: http://had.co.nz/ggplot2/

Richie Cotton said...

I've used both systems fairly extensively. My current strategy is "use ggplot2 where appropriate or lattice otherwise". ggplot2 has better defaults (especially with colour schemes). Automatic legend creation is a big bonus. However there is a lot more calculation overhead in creating the plots, so it grinds on big datasets. If you are plotting > 1e5 items, then lattice may be better. ggplot2 also lacks some features like 3d plotting and the facility for multiple y axes.

Shige said...

I agree with both of you: ggplot is an amazing piece of software. I spent a day with it and now I know how easy it can be to generate the seemingly very complicated plots (especially when they are not part of the standard toolkit).

stat arb said...

Like you I think all of them look stellar and I'm wondering which to go with. I'll be interested to hear your experiences with whatever you try.

Yang Zhao said...

Lattice is particularly lacking in making plots from multiple data frames. However I'm still sticking with lattice because ggplot is currently too slow.

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