Boxplots in Base R

This section introduces the functionality of the base-R function boxplot. Note that for some data formats, the plot function with x being a factor variable will also work.

Preliminary tasks

  1. Launch RStudio as described here: Running RStudio and setting up your working directory

  2. Prepare your data as described here: Best practices for preparing your data and save it in an external .txt tab or .csv files

  3. Import your data into R as described here: Fast reading of data from txt|csv files into R: readr package.

Here, we'll use the R built-in ToothGrowth data set.

# Print the first 6 rows
head(ToothGrowth, 6)
##    len supp dose
## 1  4.2   VC  0.5
## 2 11.5   VC  0.5
## 3  7.3   VC  0.5
## 4  5.8   VC  0.5
## 5  6.4   VC  0.5
## 6 10.0   VC  0.5

Source: STHDA, http://www.sthda.com/english/wiki/box-plots-r-base-graphs
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