Formatting log axes

In scientific analysis, we often need to represent data on a logarithmic scale. In this recipe, we will see how we can do this easily in R.

Getting ready

All you need to try out in this recipe is to run R and type the recipe in the command prompt. You can also choose to save the recipe as a script so that you can use it again later on.

How to do it...

The simplest way to create an axis logarithmic is to use the log argument in the plot() command:

plot(10^c(1:5),log="y",type="b")

How it works...

The log argument takes character values, specifying which axes should be logarithmic: x for the x-axis only, y for the y-axis only, and xy or yx for both axes.

There's more...

We can also set scales to be logarithmic by setting the xlog and ylog arguments to TRUE with the par() command. This can be handy if we wish to have the same setting for multiple plots as par() applies the settings to all subsequent plots on the same device.

Note that R will not create the plot if our data contains zero or negative values.