label - Labelling logarithmic scale display in R

Question

While plotting histogarm, scatterplots and other plots with axes scaled to logarithmic scale in R, how is it possible to use labels such as 10^-1 10^0 10^1 10^2 10^3 and so on instead of the axes showing just -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 etc. What parameters should be added to the commands such as hist(), plot() etc?

Answer 1

Apart from the solution of ggplot2 (see gsk3's comment), I would like to add that this happens automatically in plot() as well when using the correct arguments, eg :

x <- 1:10
y <- exp(1:10)
plot(x,y,log="y")

You can use the parameter log="x" for the X axis, or log="xy" for both.

If you want to format the numbers, or you have the data in log format, you can do a workaround using axis(). Some interesting functions :

• axTicks(x) gives you the location of the ticks on the X-axis (x=1) or Y-axis (x=2)
• bquote() converts expressions to language, but can replace a variable with its value. More information on bquote() in the question Latex and variables in plot label in R? .
• as.expression() makes the language object coming from bquote() an expression. This allows axis() to do the formatting as explained in ?plotmath. It can't do so with language objects.

An example for nice formatting :

x <- y <- 1:10
plot(x,y,yaxt="n")
aty <- axTicks(2)
labels <- sapply(aty,function(i)
            as.expression(bquote(10^ .(i)))
          )
axis(2,at=aty,labels=labels)

Which gives