Plot margin of pdf plot device: y-axis label falling outside graphics window

Question

I tried simply plotting some data in R with the y-axis label horizontal and left of the y-axis tick labels. I thought the code below would work:

set.seed(1)
         


        

Answer 1

This is a classic one, maybe should be a FAQ. You have to set the par settings after the call to pdf, which creates the plotting device. Otherwise you're modifying the settings on the default device:

set.seed(1)
n.obs       <- 390
vol.min     <- .20/sqrt(252 * 390)
eps         <- rnorm(n = n.obs, sd = vol.min)
              # add space to LHS of plot
pdf("~/myplot.pdf", width=5.05, height=3.8)
mar.default <- c(5,4,4,2) + 0.1
par(mar = mar.default + c(0, 4, 0, 0)) 
plot(eps,  main  =  "Hello  World!", las=1, ylab="") # suppress the y-axis label
mtext(text="eps", side=2, line=4, las=1)   
dev.off()