Error in plot.new() : figure margins too large, Scatter plot

Question

I've looked in different questions for a solution and I've tried what was suggested but I have not found a solution to make it work.

Everytime I want to run this code it always says:

Error in plot.new() : figure margins too large

and I don't know how to fix it. Here is my code:

par(mfcol=c(5,3))
hist(RtBio, main="Histograma de Bio Pappel")
boxplot(RtBio, main="Diagrama de Caja de Bio Pappel")
stem(RtBio)
plot(RtBio, main="Gráfica de Dispersión")

hist(RtAlsea, main="Histograma de Alsea")
boxplot(Alsea, main="Diagrama de caja de Alsea")
stem(RtAlsea)
plot(RtTelev, main="Gráfica de distribución de Alsea")

hist(RtTelev, main="Histograma de Televisa")
boxplot(telev, main="Diagrama de Caja de Televisa")
stem(Telev)
plot(Telev, main="Gráfica de dispersión de Televisa")

hist(RtWalmex, main="Histograma de Walmex")
boxplot(RtWalmex, main="Diagrama de caja de Walmex")
stem(RtWalmex)
plot(RtWalmex, main="Gráfica de dispersión de Walmex")

hist(RtIca, main="Histograma de Ica")
boxplot(RtIca, main="Gráfica de caja de Ica")
stem(RtIca)
plot(RtIca, main="Gráfica de dispersión de Ica")

What can I do?

Answer 1

Try to set margin size by mai=c() in par(), e.g.,

par(mfcol=c(5,3),mai=c(0.5,0.5,0.5,0))

See the documentation for more details about mai

Answer 2

Just run graphics.off() before plotting your data. This instruction solved my error. So, it's harmless to try it before taking a more complex solution.

Answer 3

Just a side-note. Sometimes this "margin" error occurs because you want to save a high-resolution figure (eg. dpi = 300 or res = 300) in R.
In this case, what you need to do is to specify the width and height. (Btw, ggsave() doesn't require this.)

This causes the margin error:

# eg. for tiff()
par(mar=c(1,1,1,1))
tiff(filename =  "qq.tiff",
     res = 300,                                                 # the margin error.
     compression = c( "lzw") )
# qq plot for genome wide association study (just an example)
qqman::qq(df$rawp, main = "Q-Q plot of GWAS p-values", cex = .3)
dev.off()

This will fix the margin error:

# eg. for tiff()
par(mar=c(1,1,1,1))
tiff(filename =  "qq.tiff",
     res = 300,                                                 # the margin error.
     width = 5, height = 4, units = 'in',                       # fixed
     compression = c( "lzw") )
# qq plot for genome wide association study (just an example)
qqman::qq(df$rawp, main = "Q-Q plot of GWAS p-values", cex = .3)
dev.off()

Answer 4

Just clear the plots and try executing the code again...It worked for me

Answer 5

This can happen when your plot panel in RStudio is too small for the margins of the plot you are trying to create. Try making expanding it and then run your code again.

RStudio UI causes an error when the plot panel is too small to display the chart:

Simply expanding the plot panel fixes the bug and displays the chart:

Answer 6

If you get this message in RStudio, clicking the 'broomstick' figure "Clear All Plots" in Plots tab and try plot() again.

Moreover Execute the command

graphics.off()

Answer 7

Every time you are creating plots you might get this error - "Error in plot.new() : figure margins too large". To avoid such errors you can first check par("mar") output. You should be getting:

[1] 5.1 4.1 4.1 2.1

To change that write:

par(mar=c(1,1,1,1))

This should rectify the error. Or else you can change the values accordingly.

Hope this works for you.

Answer 8

Invoking dev.off() to make RStudio open up a new graphics device with default settings worked for me. HTH.