Important: The stats package has been deprecated. Use the superseding package Statistics instead.

The function scatterplot with the format parameter format=sunflower of the subpackage stats[statplots] organizes data clusters into sunflowers.

This type of plot is often used or when there is a large number of data points involved.  The idea is that it is not necessary to have the detail of each individual point in a plot.  Closely grouped points are plotted instead as sunflowers.

A sunflower is a two dimensional object centered in a cube with side length l.  One radial arm extends from the center point for each real point contained within the cube.

Fractionally weighted points produce only a fraction of a radial arm. Two points of weight 1/2, in the same cube will produce one radial arm.

All points in this plot are replaced by sunflowers.  The replacement is done in a systematic way, so there will be one sunflower per cube with side-length l in a standard lattice of cubes.

If l is zero, or unspecified, a default value will be used. The default value is one-tenth the range of the x-coordinate data.

Class data is converted to classmarks before generating the plot.  Weighted data is accounted for.  Missing data is ignored.

The command with(stats[statplots] allows the use of the abbreviated form of this command.