How to connect dots where there are missing values?

Question

lets take this example:

       test=c(1,5,NA,5,4,1,NA,3,3,5,4,2)

      plot(test,type=\"l\")

This will plot test but will not connect the

Answer 1

Either you have to ignore the NAs with the mentioned solutions using na.omit() or you try to replace the NAs with reasonable values - you can use the package imputeTS for this.

You could e.g. interpolate:

library(imputeTS)
imp <- na.interpolation(test)
plot(imp, type="l")

You could take the mean as replacement:

library(imputeTS)
imp <- na.mean(test)
plot(imp, type="l")

You could also take the moving average as replacment:

library(imputeTS)
imp <- na.ma(test)
plot(imp, type="l")

In the end, it makes sense to use what is best for your use case. Oftentimes this will be 'ignoring' the NAs - since interpolation/imputation is only a estimation of the real values and also requires selecting the right method.