seqiplot {TraMineR}R Documentation

Visualization of individual sequences

Description

Plots a graphic showing individual sequences as stacked bars

Usage

seqiplot(seqdata, group=NULL, title=NULL, tlim=NULL, sortv=NULL,  ...)

Arguments

seqdata a sequence object as defined by the the seqdef function.
group plots one plot for each level of the factor given as argument.
title title for the graphic. Default to NULL.
tlim interval representing the range to be plotted. If NULL (default) tlim is set to 1:10, ie the first 10 sequences are displayed. Set to 0 if you want to plot all sequences in 'seqdata'.
sortv name of an optional variable used to sort the data before plotting.
... arguments to be passed to the plot.stslist function or other graphical parameters. Use 'border=NA' to omit borders around the bars. Use 'space=' to set the space between each sequence in the plot. Setting to 0 yields no space and is usefull if plotting a large amount of sequences. Default to NULL, ie space value is automaticaly computed. Use axes for controling the display of axes, withlegend for controling the display of a legend for the plot, etc...

Details

The seqiplot function renders individual sequences with stacked bars depicting the statuses over time. The interest of such plots, known as index-plots, has for instance been stressed by Scherer (2001), Brzinsky-Fay et al. (2006) and Gauthier (2007). Notice that such index plots for thousands of sequences result in very heavy graphic files if they are stored in PDF or POSTSCRIPT format. To reduce the size, the figures can be saved in png format by using png instead of postscript or pdf.

References

Brzinsky-Fay, C., U. Kohler, and M. Luniak (2006). Sequence analysis with Stata. The Stata Journal 6 (4), 435-460.
Gauthier, J.-A. (2007). Empirical categorizations of social trajectories: A sequential view on the life course. thèse, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des sciences sociales et politique (SSP), Lausanne.
Scherer, S. (2001). Early career patterns: A comparison of Great Britain and West Germany. European Sociological Review 17 (2), 119-144.

See Also

plot.stslist

Examples

## Plotting the first 10 sequences in the 'actcal' example data set
data(actcal)
seqiplot(seqdef(actcal,13:24))

## Plotting all sequences of the 'biofam' example data set
## sorted by birth year (birthy variable in the biofam data set)
## using 'border=NA' and 'space=0' options to have a nicer plot
data(biofam)
biofam.lab <- c("Parent", "Left", "Married", "Left+Marr",
   "Child", "Left+Child", "Left+Marr+Child", "Divorced")
biofam.seq <- seqdef(biofam, 10:25, labels=biofam.lab)

seqiplot(biofam.seq, tlim=0, border=NA, space=0, sortv=biofam$birthy)

## Plotting the sequences in the 'mvad' example data set
## grouped by levels of the 'gcse5eq' factor
data(mvad)
seqiplot(seqdef(mvad,15:86), group=mvad$gcse5eq, title="gcse5eq",
   tlim=0, border=NA, space=0)

[Package TraMineR version 1.2-1 Index]