mcmcplot: Diagnostics Plots for MCMC in HTML format

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Author(s) See Also Examples

Description

Creates an HTML file that displays diagnostic plots (trace, density, autocorrelation) from an MCMC simulation. When the number of parameters in an MCMC simulation is large, viewing all plots in a web browser is much easier than clicking through R graph windows.

Usage

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mcmcplot(mcmcout, parms = NULL, regex = NULL, random = NULL,
leaf.marker = "[\\[_]", dir = tempdir(), filename = "MCMCoutput",
extension = "html", title = NULL,
heading = title, col = NULL, lty = 1,
xlim = NULL, ylim = NULL,
style=c("gray", "plain"), greek = FALSE)

Arguments

mcmcout

posterior draws. This argument will be coerced to an mcmc object.

parms

character vector specifying subsets of parameters to plot. If parms=NULL and regex=NULL, mcmcplot will plot all parameters.

regex

character vector of regular expressions denoting groups of parameters to plot.

random

integer specifying how many parameters from each group will be randomly selected for plotting. This argument is useful when mcmcout has a large number of parameters (e.g., from a hierarchical model). If NULL, mcmcplot will plot all parameters.

leaf.marker

a regular expression with a character class that marks the beginning of the “leaf” portion of a parameter name. The default character class includes [ and _

dir

string containing the directory where the plots and the main html file will be stored.

filename

string containing the name of the main html file which will contain code to display each plot produced by mcmcplot.

extension

string containing the extension to be used for the html file.

title

string containing the title to be included in the html file. Default is to use the name of object passed as the mcmcout argument prepended with the string "MCMC Output: ".

heading

string containing the heading to be used for the html file. Default is to use the title.

col

vector of colors. This will determine the colors that will be used to plot each chain in the traceplots and density plots. Default is mcmcplotsPalette(nchains).

lty

vector of line types. This will determine the line types that will be used to plot each chain in the traceplots and density plots. If missing, mcmcplot will use 1 for all line types.

xlim

limits for the x axis of the density plot.

ylim

limits for the y axis of the density plot.

style

if "gray", then the plotting region is printed with a gray background, otherwise the default plotting region is used.

greek

if TRUE, the names of greek letters in the labels will be displayed as greek characters on the plot.

Details

The mcmcplot function generates an html file that contains diagnostics plots – trace plots, autocorrelation plots, and density plots – for parameters from an MCMC simulation. When an MCMC simulation contains a large number of parameters, it is no longer convenient to view plots in a small graph window. Viewing the plots in a web browser gives the user the ability to scroll through and examine a large number of plots in a more convenient manner.

See documentation for parms2plot for more information on how to “smartly” select parameters to plot using the parms, regex, and random arguments.

Value

Invisibly returns a string containing the path to filename.

Author(s)

S. McKay Curtis and Ilya Goldin

See Also

parms2plot, plotting functions in the coda package.

Examples

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## Not run: 
## Create fake MCMC output
nc <- 10; nr <- 1000
pnames <- c(paste("alpha[", 1:5, "]", sep=""), paste("gamma[", 1:5, "]", sep=""))
means <- rpois(10, 20)
fakemcmc <- coda::as.mcmc.list(
    lapply(1:3,
           function(i) coda::mcmc(matrix(rnorm(nc*nr, rep(means,each=nr)),
                                         nrow=nr, dimnames=list(NULL,pnames)))))

## Use mcmcplot to plot
## the fake MCMC output
mcmcplot(fakemcmc)
mcmcplot(fakemcmc, greek=TRUE)
mcmcplot(fakemcmc, xlim=range(fakemcmc)) # put the densities on the same scale
mcmcplot(fakemcmc, "gamma")
mcmcplot(fakemcmc, regex="alpha\\[[12]", style="plain")
mcmcplot(fakemcmc, "gamma", regex="alpha\\[[12]")
mcmcplot(fakemcmc, random=2)
mcmcplot(fakemcmc, random=c(2, 3))

## What happens with NULL varnames?
coda::varnames(fakemcmc) <- NULL
mcmcplot(fakemcmc)

## mcmcplot works on bugs objects too
library(R2WinBUGS)
example("openbugs", "R2WinBUGS")
## from the help file for openbugs:
schools.sim <- bugs(data, inits, parameters, model.file,
                    n.chains = 3, n.iter = 5000,
                    program = "openbugs", working.directory = NULL)
mcmcplot(schools.sim)

## End(Not run)

mcmcplots documentation built on May 2, 2019, 1:29 p.m.