Force R to plot histogram as probability (relative frequency)

Question

I am having trouble plotting a histogram as a pdf (probability)

I want the sum of all the pieces to equal an area of one so it\'s easier to compare across datasets. For

Answer 1

Are you sure? This is working for me:

> vec <- rnorm(6000000)
> 
> h <- hist(vec, breaks = 800, freq = FALSE)
> sum(h$density)
[1] 100
> unique(zapsmall(diff(h$breaks)))
[1] 0.01

Multiply the last two results and you get a probability density sum of 1. Remember that the bin width is important here.

This is with

> sessionInfo()
R version 3.0.1 RC (2013-05-11 r62732)
Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
 [3] LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_GB.UTF-8    
 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_GB.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8   
 [7] LC_PAPER=C                 LC_NAME=C                 
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tools_3.0.1