f_hist: Plot a Histogram with an Overlaid Normal Curve

In rfriend: Provides Batch Functions and Visualisation for Basic Statistical Procedures

Plot a Histogram with an Overlaid Normal Curve

Description

This function creates a histogram of the provided data and overlays it with a normal distribution curve.

Usage

f_hist(
  data,
  main = NULL,
  xlab = NULL,
  probability = TRUE,
  col = "white",
  border = "black",
  line_col = "red",
  save_png = FALSE,
  open_png = TRUE,
  save_as = NULL,
  save_in_wdir = FALSE,
  width = 8,
  height = 7,
  units = "in",
  res = 300,
  ...
)

Arguments

data	A numeric vector of data values to be plotted.
main	A character string specifying the title of the histogram. Default is "Histogram with Normal Curve".
xlab	A character string specifying the label for the x-axis. Default is the name of the data variable.
probability	A logical value indicating whether to plot a probability or frequency histogram. Default is TRUE.
col	A character string specifying the fill color of the histogram bars. Default is "white".
border	A character string specifying the color of the histogram bar borders. Default is "black".
line_col	A character string specifying the color of the normal curve line. Default is "red".
save_png	A logical value default FALSE, if TRUE a png file is saved under the name of the data of under the specified file name.
open_png	Logical. If TRUE, opens generated png files.
save_as	Character string specifying the output file path (without extension). If a full path is provided, output is saved to that location. If only a filename is given, the file is saved in tempdir(). If only a directory is specified (providing an existing directory with trailing slash), the file is named "data_name_histogram.png" in that directory. Defaults to file.path(tempdir(), "data_name_histogram.png").
save_in_wdir	Logical. If TRUE, saves the file in the working directory. Default is FALSE, this avoid unintended changes to the global environment. If save_as location is specified save_in_wdir is overwritten by save_as.
width	Numeric, png figure width default 8 inch.
height	Numeric, png figure height default 7 inch.
units	Character string, png figure units default "in" = inch, other options are: "px" = Pixels, "cm" centimeters, "mm" millimeters.
res	Numeric, png figure resolution default 300 dpi.
...	Additional arguments to be passed to the hist function.

Details

The function first captures the name of the input variable for labeling purposes. It then calculates a sequence of x-values and corresponding y-values for a normal distribution based on the mean and standard deviation of the data. The histogram is plotted with specified aesthetics, and a normal curve is overlaid. To increase resolution you can use png(...,res = 600) or the 'RStudio' chunk setting, e.g. dpi=600.

Value

A histogram plot is created and the function returns this as a recordedplot.

Author(s)

Sander H. van Delden [e-mail]

See Also

hist, dnorm, lines

Examples

# Example usage:
set.seed(123)
sample_data <- rnorm(100)
f_hist(sample_data)

rfriend documentation built on July 7, 2026, 1:06 a.m.