[r] Add error bars to show standard deviation on a plot in R

For each X-value I calculated the average Y-value and the standard deviation (sd) of each Y-value

x  = 1:5
y  = c(1.1, 1.5, 2.9, 3.8, 5.2)
sd = c(0.1, 0.3, 0.2, 0.2, 0.4)

plot (x, y)

How can I use the standard deviation to add error bars to each datapoint of my plot?

This question is related to r plot statistics standard-deviation errorbar

The answer is


A Problem with csgillespie solution appears, when You have an logarithmic X axis. The you will have a different length of the small bars on the right an the left side (the epsilon follows the x-values).

You should better use the errbar function from the Hmisc package:

d = data.frame(
  x  = c(1:5)
  , y  = c(1.1, 1.5, 2.9, 3.8, 5.2)
  , sd = c(0.2, 0.3, 0.2, 0.0, 0.4)
)

##install.packages("Hmisc", dependencies=T)
library("Hmisc")

# add error bars (without adjusting yrange)
plot(d$x, d$y, type="n")
with (
  data = d
  , expr = errbar(x, y, y+sd, y-sd, add=T, pch=1, cap=.1)
)

# new plot (adjusts Yrange automatically)
with (
  data = d
  , expr = errbar(x, y, y+sd, y-sd, add=F, pch=1, cap=.015, log="x")
)

In addition to @csgillespie's answer, segments is also vectorised to help with this sort of thing:

plot (x, y, ylim=c(0,6))
segments(x,y-sd,x,y+sd)
epsilon <- 0.02
segments(x-epsilon,y-sd,x+epsilon,y-sd)
segments(x-epsilon,y+sd,x+epsilon,y+sd)

enter image description here


A solution with ggplot2 :

qplot(x,y)+geom_errorbar(aes(x=x, ymin=y-sd, ymax=y+sd), width=0.25)

enter image description here


You can use segments to add the bars in base graphics. Here epsilon controls the line across the top and bottom of the line.

plot (x, y, ylim=c(0, 6))
epsilon = 0.02
for(i in 1:5) {
    up = y[i] + sd[i]
    low = y[i] - sd[i]
    segments(x[i],low , x[i], up)
    segments(x[i]-epsilon, up , x[i]+epsilon, up)
    segments(x[i]-epsilon, low , x[i]+epsilon, low)
}

As @thelatemail points out, I should really have used vectorised function calls:

segments(x, y-sd,x, y+sd)
epsilon = 0.02
segments(x-epsilon,y-sd,x+epsilon,y-sd)
segments(x-epsilon,y+sd,x+epsilon,y+sd)

enter image description here


You can use arrows:

arrows(x,y-sd,x,y+sd, code=3, length=0.02, angle = 90)

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