box_plot: Box and whiskers plot for sediment tracers

In fingerPro: A Comprehensive Package for Sediment Source Unmixing

Box and whiskers plot for sediment tracers

Description

This function creates a series of box and whisker plots to visualize the distribution and variability of individual tracers within a dataset. It is designed to work with sediment source and mixture data, automatically adapting to averaged or raw data formats.

Usage

box_plot(data, tracers = NULL, ncol = 3, colors = NULL)

Arguments

data	A data frame containing sediment source and mixture data. Users should ensure their data is in a valid format by using the check_database() function before running this function.
tracers	A numeric vector specifying the column indices of the tracers to be plotted. The index 1 corresponds to the first tracer column after the sample ID and group columns. If NULL (the default), plots will be generated for all tracer columns.
ncol	An integer specifying the number of charts to display per row in the final plot layout.
colors	A character vector of colors to use for the box plots. The colors are applied sequentially to each group (sources and mixture).

Details

This function is a wrapper for ggplot2 that automates the creation of a series of box plots, one for each tracer. The function first checks if the input data is averaged, and if so, converts it to a virtual raw dataset using the raw_dataset() function to enable the box plot visualization.

Each plot displays the distribution of a single tracer, with different groups (sources and mixtures) represented by separate box plots. In addition to the standard five-number summary (median, hinges, and whiskers), the function also overlays the sample count and the mean value for each group, providing a more detailed summary of the data.

The final output is a multi-panel plot arranged in a grid, with an optional legend depending on the input data.

fingerPro documentation built on Aug. 27, 2025, 5:11 p.m.