Plot the trace lines of the MICE algorithm

Trace line plots portray the value of an estimate against the iteration number. The estimate can be anything that you can calculate, but typically are chosen as parameter of scientific interest. The plot method for a mids object plots the mean and standard deviation of the imputed (not observed) values against the iteration number for each of the $m$ replications. By default, the function plot the development of the mean and standard deviation for each incomplete variable. On convergence, the streams should intermingle and be free of any trend.

Usage

# S3 method for class 'mids'
plot(
  x,
  y = NULL,
  theme = mice.theme(),
  layout = c(2, 3),
  type = "l",
  col = 1:10,
  lty = 1,
  ...
)

Arguments

x: An object of class mids
y: A formula that specifies which variables, stream and iterations are plotted. If omitted, all streams, variables and iterations are plotted.
theme: The trellis theme to applied to the graphs. The default is mice.theme().
layout: A vector of length 2 given the number of columns and rows in the plot. The default is c(2, 3).
type: Parameter type of panel.xyplot.
col: Parameter col of panel.xyplot.
lty: Parameter lty of panel.xyplot.
...: Extra arguments for xyplot.

Value

An object of class "trellis".

Author

Stef van Buuren 2011

Examples

imp <- mice(nhanes, print = FALSE)
plot(imp, bmi + chl ~ .it | .ms, layout = c(2, 1))