animation-package()

This package contains a variety functions for animations in statistics which could probably aid in teaching statistics and data analysis; it also has several utilities to export R animations to other formats.

This package mainly makes use of HTML & JavaScript and R windows graphics devices (such as x11) to demonstrate animations in statistics; other kinds of output such as Flash (SWF) or GIF animations or PDF animations are also available if required software packages have been installed. See below for details on each type of animation.

library(animation)
### 1. How to setup a simple animation ###

## set some options first
ani.options(interval = 0.2, nmax = 10)
## use a loop to create images one by one
for (i in 1:ani.options('nmax')) {
  plot(rnorm(30))
  ani.pause()   ## pause for a while ('interval')
}
## restore the options


## see ?ani.record for an alternative way to set up an animation

### 2. Animations in HTML pages ###
saveHTML({
  ani.options(interval = 0.05, nmax = 30)
  par(mar = c(3, 3, 2, 0.5), mgp = c(2, .5, 0), tcl = -0.3,
      cex.axis = 0.8, cex.lab = 0.8, cex.main = 1)
  brownian.motion(pch = 21, cex = 5, col = 'red', bg = 'yellow',
                  main = 'Demonstration of Brownian Motion')
}, img.name = 'bm_plot', title = 'Demonstration of Brownian Motion',
         description = c('Random walk on the 2D plane: for each point',
                         '(x, y), x = x + rnorm(1) and y = y + rnorm(1).'))

### 3. GIF animations ###
saveGIF({
  ani.options(nmax = 30)
  brownian.motion(pch = 21, cex = 5, col = 'red', bg = 'yellow')
}, interval = 0.05, movie.name = 'bm_demo.gif', ani.width = 600, ani.height = 600)


### 4. Flash animations ###
saveSWF({
  par(mar = c(3, 2.5, 1, 0.2), pch = 20, mgp = c(1.5, 0.5, 0))
  buffon.needle(type = 'S')
}, ani.dev = 'pdf', ani.type = 'pdf', swf.name = 'buffon.swf',
        interval = 0.1, nmax = 40, ani.height = 7, ani.width = 7)


### 5. PDF animations ###
saveLatex({
  par(mar = c(3, 3, 1, 0.5), mgp = c(2, 0.5, 0), tcl = -0.3,
      cex.axis = 0.8, cex.lab = 0.8, cex.main = 1)
  brownian.motion(pch = 21, cex = 5, col = 'red', bg = 'yellow', main = 'Brownian Motion')
}, img.name = 'BM_plot',
          latex.filename = 'brownian_motion.tex'),
          interval = 0.1, nmax = 20)