Force R to write scientific notations as n.nn x 10^-n with superscript

Question

Let\'s say I have two floats

a <- 8.9384920e-24
b <- 0.00293892837

I would like to display either of them in 10-base scientific notation

Answer 1

You may check eaxis in package sfsmisc

# some data
x <- seq(1, 100000, len = 10)
y <- seq(1e-5, 1e-4, len = 10)

# default axes
plot(x, y)

# eaxis
plot(x, y, axes = FALSE)
eaxis(side = 1)
eaxis(side = 2)

You may also create a label expression using pretty10exp() from the same package. For example to apply the format to a plot title:

plot(x, y, axes = FALSE)
title(pretty10exp(y[1]))