R Programming By Example

Using matrix scatter plots for a quick overview

What happens if we want to visualize a lot of scatter plots in a single graph to quickly get a sense for the data? In that case, we need matrix scatter plots. We have various package options to create such matrix scatter plots (such as the car package). However, to keep things simple, we will use a built-in function instead of an external package.

By looking at the graph shown below, we can get a big-picture view of the interactions among variables. The purpose of this type of visualization is not to provide details, but to provide a general overview. To read this plot we need to look at any interesting scatter plot in the matrix, and move both horizontally and vertically until we find the name ...