What does autoplot.microbenchmark actually plot?

Question

According to the docs, microbenchmark:::autoplot \"Uses ggplot2 to produce a more legible graph of microbenchmark timings.\"

Cool! Let\'s try the example co

Answer 1

The short answer is a violin plot:

It is a box plot with a rotated kernel density plot on each side.

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The longer more interesting(?) answer. When you call the autoplot function, you are actually calling

## class(ts) is microbenchmark
autoplot.microbenchmark

We can then inspect the actual function call via

R> getS3method("autoplot", "microbenchmark")
function (object, ..., log = TRUE, y_max = 1.05 * max(object$time)) 
{
    y_min <- 0
    object$ntime <- convert_to_unit(object$time, "t")
    plt <- ggplot(object, ggplot2::aes_string(x = "expr", y = "ntime"))
 ## Another ~6 lines or so after this

The key line is + stat_ydensity(). Looking at ?stat_ydensity you come to the help page on violin plots.