PLOT produces a plot of one or more series versus the observation number (usually in units of time). The series are plotted on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis. The plot may be printed as well as displayed if a hardcopy device such as a Laserjet or dot matrix printer is available. This section describes the graphics version of PLOT, which is available only for TSP/Oxmetrics, DOS/Win TSP, unix, and MAC TSP. For other versions, see the non-graphics PLOT command.
PLOT (A4, DASH, DEVICE=<name of printer>, FILE=<name of file>, HEIGHT=<height of characters>, HIRES, LANDSCAP or PORTRAIT, MIN=<y axis minimum>, MAX=<y axis maximum>, ORIGIN, PREVIEW, SYMBOL, TITLE= 'text string to be used as title', WIDTH) <list of series names> ;
Usage
PLOT is followed by a single series name, or a list of series names. On the plot, the series will be differentiated by colors or the style of the lines used to plot them. Parameters to control the appearance and printing of the plot may be included in parentheses following the word PLOT.
The graph will be displayed on the screen; if a DEVICE= is specified, a prompt is also displayed which instructs you to type "P" if you wish to print the graph. If you type anything else, the graph will not be printed; this is useful if you decide you do not like its appearance after you have seen the screen.
If there are observations with missing data or if the FREQ (PANEL) option is set, there will be breaks in the plotted lines.
A high resolution plot is produced on the screen, with time (the observation index) on the horizontal axis and the series on the vertical access. If there is more than one series, they are differentiated by means of colors (see below for other options).
General DOS/Win only MAC only
For convenience, the DEVICE=, FILE= AND HEIGHT= options of PLOT that you set are retained in the next PLOT(s) or GRAPH(s) until they are overridden explicitly. They may also be set in a LOGIN.TSP file by not specifying any series to plot.
DASH/NODASH specifies whether the lines for different series on the screen are to be distinguished by using different dash patterns (of which there are seven). The default is no dashes (just color) on the screen and dashes on printed output.
MIN= minimum value for the y-axis. This value must be less than or equal to the minimum value in the data.
MAX= maximum value for the y-axis. This value must be greater than or equal to the maximum value in the data.
ORIGIN/NOORIGIN causes a horizontal line to be drawn starting at zero on the vertical axis.
PREVIEW/NOPREVIE specifies whether the graph is to be shown on the screen before printing or saving. The default is PREVIEW for interactive use and NOPREVIE for batch use. This option is not used when working inside the Oxmetrics shell.
SYMBOL/NOSYMBOL specifies that symbols are to be used for plotting.
TITLE= 'a string which will be printed across the top of the graph'.
A4/NOA4 specifies A4 paper size. Available for DEVICE=LJ3 or POSTSCRIPT only.
DEVICE= CHAR or EPSON or LJ2 or LJ3 or LJET or LJPLUS or LJR75 or LJR100 or LJR150 or LJR300 or POSTSCRI or PS specifies the hardcopy device to be used for printer output. LJ means HP LaserJet or compatible, EPSON is EPSON dot matrix or compatible, POSTSCRI and PS are Postcript output, and CHAR is the old line printer output (characters instead of graphics). The LJ suffixes specify models of the printer and the LJR suffixes specify the resolution of the LaserJet printer directly, rather than giving the printer type. The default resolutions for the LJET, LJPLUS, and LJ2 printers are 100, 150, and 300 respectively. Note that larger resolutions imply larger file sizes and printing times.
FILE= the name of a file to which the graphics image is to be written. This file can be printed later; for example, if you are running under DOS and your printer device is LPT1, print the plot with the command
copy/b file LPT1:
HEIGHT= letter height in inches. The default* is .25. Values in the range (0,1] are valid.
HIRES/NOHIRES controls how graphs are printed in batch mode (when PREVIEW is not being used). Normally (NOHIRES), graphs are printed in character mode to the batch output file. When the HIRES option is used, the patched DEVICE= and FILE= will be used; usually this will send a page to LPT1 for each graph.
LANDSCAP/PORTRAIT specifies the orientation of the plot. On the Mac, specify this option in the dialog box.
WIDTH/NOWIDTH specifies whether varying width sizes are to be used to distinguish the lines corresponding to different series on the graph.
The following example plots the graph shown in the User's Guide:
FREQ Q;
SMPL 53:1 67:4;
LOAD expend approp; ? Original Almon data from Maddala, p. 370
2072 1660 2077 1926 2078 2181 2043 1897 2062 1695 2067 1705 1964
1731 1981 2151
...5715 5412 5637 5465 5383 5550 5467 5465;
PLOT (PORT, PREV, DEV=LJ3, FILE='ALMON.PLT', TITLE='ALMON DATA') EXPEND APPROP;
Here is an example of setting the plot options without actually plotting anything:
PLOT (DEV=LJ3, HEIGHT=.2) ;