ABSTRACT
The terms base graphics or traditional graphics refer to the graphics system originally built into the R language. Traditional or base graphics functions are based on the graphics package, while grid graphics is based on the grid package. Murrell gives the following description of this package. This chapter describes the R base graphics options used to construct plots like the explanatory visualization of the relationship between sugars and calories from the UScereal data frame. It illustrates some of the key differences between exploratory and explanatory visualizations. One advantage of the lattice graphics system is that it can produce extremely sophisticated plots from relatively simple expressions, especially with its multipanel conditioning feature. The S4 system is also significantly different from the S3 system—methods still belong to generic functions, but the structure is more formal; like the lattice and ggplot2 graphics systems, the S4 system has greater flexibility, but a correspondingly steeper learning curve.
