Paul Murrell's Home Page

Department

• My department home page.

Research

• The home page for R: A language and environment for computing and graphics (my R graphics todo list).
• The home page for an add-on package for R called grid which provides a new graphical system for R.
• A few other R packages (some under development):

  metaplot	Flexible Forest Plots. Available from github.
  animaker	Tools for generating animation sequence descriptions. Early days (e.g., no help files), but there is a Tech Report. Available from github.
  gridGraphviz	Tools for drawing node-and-edge graphs that have been laid out by graphviz (via Rgraphviz). Available from R-Forge.
  gridDebug	Tools for debugging grid graphics. Available from R-Forge.
  hyperdraw	Tools for visualizing hypergraphs. Available from BioConductor.
  rdataviewer	Experimental tool for viewing R objects. Windows binary also available (thanks to Uwe Ligges' online autobuilder).
  compare	Tools for comparing R objects that are not identical. Available on CRAN.
  hexView	Tools for reading and viewing raw byte content of files. Available on CRAN.
  grImport	Tools for importing PostScript images and adding them to R graphical scenes (plots). (See also the 2009 JSS article and talk at UseR 2006 below) Available on CRAN. (Requires R 2.3.0 or above)
  graphicsQC	Tools for regression testing of graphics output (See also the talk at DSC 2003 below) (should run on any recent R version) This has been superseded by a graphicsQC package jointly developed with Stephen Gardiner that is hosted on R-Forge and available from CRAN. (See also the 2009 JSS article below)
  gridBase	Integrating grid output with base graphics output Available on CRAN. (requires R >= 1.8.0)
  gridSVG	Producing SVG output from grid (including transparency, hyperlinks, animation, and scripts) Windows binary also available (thanks to Uwe Ligges' online autobuilder). (requires R [grid] >= 2.0.0; older versions for R 2.*, R 1.9, R 1.8) This has been superseded by a gridSVG package jointly developed with Simon Potter that is hosted on R-Forge and available on CRAN. (Requires R 2.13.0 or above) A page of links to documentation and example uses.
  clines	A clines() function for returning the contour lines calculated by contour() NOTE: This was a stop-gap package to provide access to C code underlying contour(). Now obsolete (functionality provided by contourLines() function in base graphics package [that should really be in the grDevices package!]). (requires R > 1.6.0)

• A technical report on Generating Structured and Labelled SVG (why structure and labelling is important in SVG code and how to achieve it) together with Simon Potter.
• A technical report on Generating unique names in gridSVG (how grid grob names get transformed to SVG ids by gridSVG) together with Simon Potter.
• A technical report on Post-Processing grid Graphics (creating an interactive ggplot2 plot for the web).
• A draft Comment on Gelman and Unwin's discussion about statistical graphics versus information visualization (to appear in the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics).
• A technical report on Generating Animation Sequence Descriptions ("storyboarding" animation sequences) together with Simon Potter.
• A technical report on Writing grid Extensions (a new approach to developing custom grid grobs).
• A technical report on A Structured Approach for Generating SVG (gridSVG now uses the XML package to generate SVG) together with Simon Potter.
• A technical report on Working with the gridSVG Coordinate System (gridSVG now exports coordinate system information to SVG/javascript) together with Simon Potter.
• A technical report on Voronoi Treemaps in R (includes link to code).
• A draft article "It's Not What You Draw, It's What You Not Draw: Drawing Paths With Holes in R Graphics" (published in The R Journal), with accompanying resources.
• A draft article "Viewing Data: The rdataviewer package", (with accompanying resources).
• A table of R graphics par() memnonics.
• A draft article "What's in a Name?: The Importance of Naming grid Grobs" (published in The R Journal).
• A draft article "Debugging grid Graphics" (published in The R Journal).
• A draft article "Dynamic and Interactive R Graphics for the Web: the gridSVG package", joint with Simon Potter (with accompanying resources).
• The slides from a talk titled R Graphics: What's in it for You? (a high-level summary of the features of R graphics that allow you to customise, extend, and program R graphics [and why that is such a useful thing]) given at CSIRO R User Group Conference (October 2011), plus a page of resources.
• The slides from a talk titled What's in a name? (a naming scheme for 'lattice' and how that can be used to do fine-tuned customisations; plus a couple more gridSVG demos) given at the NZSA 2011 conference (August 2011), plus a page of resources.
• The slides from a talk on Vector Image Processing (importing a picture into R and exporting an interactive SVG version) given at the UseR! 2011 conference (August 2011), plus a page of resources.
• The resources from a short course Introduction to Grid Graphics given at the UseR! 2011 conference (August 2011).
• The slides from a talk on Is image() Everything? (the recently-added raster image support in the R graphics engine) given at the Bay Area UseR Group (July 2011), plus a page of resources.
• The slides from a talk on Dynamic and Interactive R Graphics for the Web (the gridSVG package) given at Genentech (July 2011), plus a page of resources.
• The slides from a talk on Gore: What is it Good For? (an argument for the usefulness of knowledge of and access to low-level gory details of graphics systems) given at Berkeley (July 2011), plus a page of resources.
• The web pages for my book "R Graphics, Second Edition" (2011, Chapman Hall/CRC).
• Some notes on using special glyphs within text output on an R graphics device.
• The slides from a talk on How to be a DRY lecturer given at ICOTS 8, Ljubljana, Slovenia (July 2010).
• The slides from a talk on Exploring Student Histories (plus a supporting data set and R code) given at The University of Auckland (August 2009).
• The slides from a talk on Viewing R Objects (the 'rdataviewer' package) given at The University of Auckland (July 2009).
• The web pages for my book "Introduction to Data Technologies".
• A draft article "Quality Control for Statistical Graphics: the graphicsQC package for R", joint with Stephen Gardiner (published in JSS).
• A draft article "Importing Vector Graphics: the grImport package for R" (published in JSS), plus a tar ball of supporting files, plus what some might deem a frivolous application (with the assistance of the 'animation' package).
• The slides from a talk on Automating Marking of R Code (the 'compare' package) given at The University of Auckland (October 2008). Also see the corresponding article in R News volume 8(2).
• A draft article "Drawing Diagrams with R" (published in The R Journal), plus a small R package gridDiagram (Windows binary) in support of the article.
• The slides from a talk on Reusable Documents given at NZSA2008 (University of Waikato, September 2008) [plus a longer version that there wasn't time for].
• The Handbook of Computational Statistics (Volume III) Data Visualization.
• The slides from a talk on Why Details Matter in Statistical Graphics given at the Vienna University of Technology (Nov 2007).
• The slides from a talk on Graphical Data and Data Graphics given at the University of Economics and Business Administration in Vienna (Oct 2007). Same first half as the Cambridge talk, but the second half has a much better example of extracting data from survival curves.
• The slides from a talk on Graphical Data and Data Graphics given at the MRC BSU in Cambridge (July 2007; includes demonstration of grImport being used to extract data from a plot).
• The slides from a talk on Display Lists in R (plus R code for the examples and one extended example) given at DSC 2007 in Auckland.
• The slides from a talk on Importing Graphics for Statistical Plots given at JSM 2006 in Seattle (more on grImport package). WARNING: over 6MB download.
• The cmsyasm font for producing mathematical formulas in R (in PDF or PostScript output) using LaTeX math symbols.
• The slides from a talk on fonts in plots at ASC/NZSA 2006 in Auckland (plus source files).
• The slides from a keynote at useR! 2006 "Can R Draw Graphs?" (includes mention of grImport package). WARNING: over 6MB download.
• The slides from a talk on writing graphics functions using grid given at DSC 2005 (Seattle).
• The web pages for my book "R Graphics" (2005, Chapman Hall/CRC).
• The slides from a keynote at useR! 2004; "grid Graphics and Programming".
• The slides from talks at a workshop in Tokyo (December 2003): recent developments in R, R grid graphics (slight modification of the talk given in Vancouver and Toronto), and current and future developments in R graphics.
• The slides from a talk on grid given at UBC (Vancouver) and York University (Toronto) 2003.
• The (HTML) slides from a talk on Web Delivery of R Graphics at JSM 2003.
  This talk includes material on the gridSVG package.
  The SVG content within the slides has only been verified using the Adobe SVG Viewer 3.0 under Windows and Internet Explorer.
• The slides from a course on R Graphics at DSC 2003 (and a handout).
• The slides from a course on S Graphics at Auckland Feb 2003 (and a handout).
• The slides from a talk on quality assurance for graphics at DSC 2003.
• The slides from a talk on colour at JSM 2002.
• The slides from a talk on grid at DSC 2001.

Teaching

• The slides from a departmental talk on STATS 220.
• The home page for the course STATS 220.
• Some ideas for graduate student projects (or theses or even just simple exercises).