In many situations, we require that several plots are placed in the same figure as subplots. R has various ways of doing it. Base Graphics has three different ways to draw subplots, i.e. mfrow, layout and split.screen, with increasing degree of complexity, and, at the same time, with increased control over the plot elements. This example introduces the mfrow,  mfcol and layout functions in Base Graphics. We use the familiar iris dataset for the illustrations.

Answers to the exercises are available here.If you obtained a different (correct) answer than those listed on the solutions page, please feel free to post your answer as a comment on that page.

Exercise 1
Consider the iris dataset, draw the following scatterplots, a) Sepal.Length vs Sepal.Width, b) Sepal.Length vs Petal.Length , and c) Sepal.Length vs Petal.Width . Annotate each scatterplot with a title. Use separate colors and plotting characters for each plot.

Exercise 2
Plot the three scatterplots in the same figure as subplots arranged in one row. Use mfrow.

Exercise 3
Plot the three scatterplots in the same figure as subplots arranged in one column. Use mfrow .

Exercise 4
Repeat the same scatterplots. Partition in such a way that the first row contains plots a and b, and the second row contain plot c. Use mfrow.

Exercise 5
Repeat Exercise 2 with mfcol.

Exercise 6
Repeat Exercise 3 with mfcol.

Exercise 7
Repeat Exercise 4 with mfcol.

Exercise 8
Repeat Exercise 2 with layout.

Exercise 9
Repeat Exercise 3 with layout.

Exercise 10
Repeat Exercise 4 with layout. In this case, let scatterplot c occupy the second row completely.