Plot() function is R's most generic function for plotting different types of graphs. And making a animation of sample graphs with is as useless as it can be useful for educational purposes.

Animation would look like this:

Useless plot() animations

So the gist of the function is two-fold:

  1. Data and description of the graph
  2. Animation created from png files stored in temporary folder (tested on Windows and Unix)

  library(magick)  set.seed(2908)   plot_animation <- function(SavePath){            # create a temporary directory to store plot files       dir_out <- file.path(tempdir(), "ShowCaseTempFolder")       dir.create(dir_out, recursive = TRUE)              # general data       AllData <- data.frame(graph=c                             (                               "plot(ScatterData, main = 'Scatterplot')"                               ,"plot(BarData, main = 'Histogram')"                               ,"plot(BarData, rnorm(150), main = 'Boxplot')"                               ,"plot(TimeSeriesData, main = 'Time-series')"                               ,"plot(FunctionData, -10, 5*pi, main = 'Plot a function')"                               ,"plot(IrisData, main = 'Correlation plot for two variables')"                               ,"plot(IrisData, main = 'Correlation plot for two variables with lines of SS')                                  lines(lowess(iris[,1:2]))"                               ,"plot(IrisData3, main = 'Correlation plot for three or more')"                                                            ),                             data=c('ScatterData <- cbind(rnorm(200),rnorm(200) *                                     rnorm(200) + rnorm(200))'                                    ,'BarData <- factor(iris$Sepal.Width)'                                    ,'BarData <- factor(iris$Sepal.Width)'                                    ,'TimeSeriesData <- ts(matrix(rnorm(300),                                           nrow = 300, ncol = 1), start = c(1990, 1),                                          frequency = 12)'                                    ,'FunctionData <- function(x) {x^4*pi}'                                    ,'IrisData <- as.data.frame(iris[, 1:2])'                                    ,'IrisData <- as.data.frame(iris[, 1:2])'                                    ,'IrisData3 <- as.data.frame(iris[, 1:3])'                             )       )                                                           for (i in 1:nrow(AllData)) {           graphinfo  <- as.character(AllData$graph[i])           datainfo <- as.character(AllData$data[i])           eval(parse(text=datainfo))           name_p <- paste0(dir_out,'\\',i,'.png')           png(name_p)           par(mfrow=c(3,1))            p <- eval(parse(text=graphinfo))                      plot(c(0, 1), c(0, 1), ann = FALSE, bty = 'n', type = 'n', xaxt = 'n', yaxt = 'n')           text(x = 0.5, y = 0.5, paste("Graph code: ", graphinfo), cex = 1.5, col = "Darkgreen", font=1, adj=0.5)                      plot(c(0, 1), c(0, 1), ann = FALSE, bty = 'n', type = 'n', xaxt = 'n', yaxt = 'n')           text(x = 0.5, y = 0.5, paste("Data script: ",datainfo), cex = 1.5, col = "Darkblue", font=1, adj=0.5)                      par(mfrow=c(1,1))            dev.off()         }                       # Render animation and store to disk       plot_animation <- image_animate(image_join(lapply(list.files(dir_out, full.names = TRUE), image_read)), fps = 0.5)       image_write(image = plot_animation,path = SavePath)       unlink(dir_out, recursive=TRUE)  }

And to run the function with inputing the final location where you want the animation to be stored.

 Store_path <- 'yourlocation\folder\ShowCase.gif' plot_animation(Store_path)

Enjoy the animation. 🙂

As always, code is available in at the Github in same Useless_R_function repository.

Happy R-coding!

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