Plot time series with confidence intervals in R

Question

Here is a plot of several different time series that I made in R:

I made these using a simple loop:

for(i in 1:ngroups){
  x[paste0("Group_",i)] = apply(x[,group == i],1,mean)
}

plot(x$Group_1,type="l",ylim=c(0,300))
for(i in 2:ngroups){
    lines(x[paste0("Group_",i)],col=i)
}

I also could have made this plot using matplot. Now, as you can see, each group is the mean of several other columns. What I would like to do is plot the series as in the plot above, but additionally show the range of the underlying data contributing to that mean. For example, the purple line would be bounded by a region shaded light purple. At any given time index, the purple region will extend from the lowest value in the purple group to the highest value (or, say, the 5 to 95 percentiles). Is there an elegant/clever way to do this?

Answer 1

Here is an answer using the graphics package (graphics that come with R). I also try to explain how it is that the polygon (which is used to generate the CI) is created. This can be repurposed to solve your problem, for which I do not have the exact data.

# Values for noise and CI size
s.e. <- 0.25 # standard error of noise
interval <- s.e.*qnorm(0.975) # standard error * 97.5% quantile

# Values for Fake Data
x <- 1:10 # x values
y <- (x-1)*0.5 + rnorm(length(x), mean=0, sd=s.e.) # generate y values

# Main Plot
ylim <- c(min(y)-interval, max(y)+interval) # account for CI when determining ylim
plot(x, y, type="l", lwd=2, ylim=ylim) # plot x and y

# Determine the x values that will go into CI
CI.x.top <- x # x values going forward
CI.x.bot <- rev(x) # x values backwards
CI.x <- c(CI.x.top, CI.x.bot) # polygons are drawn clockwise

# Determine the Y values for CI
CI.y.top <- y+interval # top of CI
CI.y.bot <- rev(y)-interval # bottom of CI, but rev Y!
CI.y <- c(CI.y.top,CI.y.bot) # forward, then backward

# Add a polygon for the CI
CI.col <- adjustcolor("blue",alpha.f=0.25) # Pick a pretty CI color
polygon(CI.x, CI.y, col=CI.col, border=NA) # draw the polygon

# Point out path of polygon
arrows(CI.x.top[1], CI.y.top[1]+0.1, CI.x.top[3], CI.y.top[3]+0.1)
arrows(CI.x.top[5], CI.y.top[5]+0.1, CI.x.top[7], CI.y.top[7]+0.1)

arrows(CI.x.bot[1], CI.y.bot[1]-0.1, CI.x.bot[3], CI.y.bot[3]-0.1)
arrows(CI.x.bot[6], CI.y.bot[6]-0.1, CI.x.bot[8], CI.y.bot[8]-0.1)

# Add legend to explain what the arrows are
legend("topleft", legend="Arrows indicate path\nfor drawing polygon", xjust=0.5, bty="n")

And here is the final result: