Important: The stats package has been deprecated. Use the superseding package Statistics instead.

The function scatterplot with the format parameter format=excised of the subpackage stats[statplots] removes the fraction of least dense data and plots a scatterplot of the remaining data.

This type of plot is often used when there is a large number of data points involved.  The idea is that it is not necessary to have the detail of each individual point in a plot.  Closely grouped points are supposedly more representative, so all other points are excised.

When p is a positive number between zero and one, p times the number of points are excised from the plot.  In other words only the  most densely clustered points are plotted in the scatter plot.

When p is a negative number between zero and -1,  of the most densely clustered points are excised from the plot.  In this case  of the least densely clustered points are plotted in the scatter plot.

The default, when p is not specified is zero.  This plot is identical to a scatter plot with no format parameter.

Relative density of points is calculated approximately by finding the distances between all points using the distance metric .

Class data is converted to classmarks before generating the plot.  Weighted data is accounted for.  Missing data is ignored.

The command with(stats[statplots]) allows the use of the abbreviated form of this command.