[greattypo]

R has some basic visualization libraries. The graphs are overall very functional, but basic. Ex: http://www.statmethods.net/advgraphs/images/splotm.png

Alternatives like Matlab, Maple, Stata all have basically the same 'look' to their default graphing packages.

Even though Mathematica would not be the right choice for statistical processing, the graphs it produces are a step above the rest.

So depends what you're use case is.. any of the above would look good enough for an academic paper. But if you're going to be publishing these in a magazine, they probably won't cut it.

[mayanklahiri]

> R has some basic visualization libraries

If you include CRAN packages, then this couldn't be further from the truth: http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/

R can be made to produce beautiful visualizations.

Edit: here's a link to the top-voted thumbnails of R visualization: http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php?sort=votes

IMO, since it can be scripted from the command line, it's high time Gnuplot died a graceful death.

[sciboy]

I have used R/ggplot for a long time now, and it's exceedingly difficult to produce beautiful visualizations.

The only thing that makes tufte-quality visualizations in my experience is hand-building your graphs in tikz.

The graphs you linked to are hideous from an aesthetics point of view; font's are ugly, data:ink ratio far too low, color choices poor etc.

[wwortiz]

Especially when you have such pretty defaults in things like Matlab and Mathematica.

Matplotlib (http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/) is actually the best opensource library for creating great looking graphs that I have come across, and is comparable to Matlab and Mathematica.

[sciboy]

I've looked at matplotlib but still think it's ugly by default.

Compare to:

http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/weather-stations-data/

http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/rna-codons-table/

The beauty of tex font's + vector graphics is impressive. Try zooming in on the sparklines in the first example

[cdavid]

I guess taste comes in place - I find producing good (as in academic publication good) figures in matlab an exercice of pain. The subplot mechanism is awful (at least was 5 years ago), and it is hard to control the layout. I heard mathematic is much better in that regard, but never used it myself.