mf_distr: Plot a distribution

In mapsf: Thematic Cartography

Plot a distribution

Description

This function displays the statistical distribution of a variable with a histogram, a box plot, a strip chart and a density curve on the same plot.

This graphic can be useful to choose an appropriate classification method for choropleth maps.

User-defined class boundaries can also be displayed on the plot.

Usage

mf_distr(
  x,
  nbins,
  bw,
  breaks,
  pal,
  alpha = 1,
  rev = FALSE,
  main = "Distribution",
  yaxt = TRUE,
  ylab = "Density",
  seed = 46
)

Arguments

x	a numeric variable
nbins	number of bins in the histogram
bw	bandwidth of the density curve
breaks	a vector of class boundaries. If breaks is used, the boxplot is not displayed.
pal	a color, a set of colors (hex codes) or a palette name. Palette names can be obtained with hcl.pals. The default color is either the highlight color if breaks is not used, or the background color otherwise (see mf_theme).
alpha	opacity, in the range [0,1] (0 means transparent and 1 means opaque). Default is set to 1.
rev	logical indicating whether the ordering of the colors should be reversed
main	plot title
yaxt	if FALSE the y axis is not displayed
ylab	y axis label
seed	seed used to position the points on the strip chart

Value

The number of bins of the histogram and the bandwidth of the density curve are (invisibly) returned in a list.

Examples

(mf_distr(rnorm(1000)))
mf_distr(rbeta(1000, .6, 7))
mf_distr(rbeta(1000, 5, .6))
a <- rbeta(1000, .6, 7)
bks <- mf_get_breaks(a, nbreaks = 5, breaks = "quantile")
mf_distr(a, breaks = bks)
mf_distr(a,
  breaks = bks, pal = "Teal", yaxt = FALSE,
  main = 'Classification method : "quantile"'
)

mapsf documentation built on Oct. 9, 2026, 5:07 p.m.