Load packages

library(tidyverse)
library(mosaic)
library(plotly)

Gimme a function

Say, you have some function such as

$$f\left(x\right)=x^2+z^2$$

In more R-ish:

f <- makeFun(x^2 + z^2 ~ x & z)

And you would like to plot it.

Observe that this function has two input (independent) variables, $x$ and $z$, plus one output (dependent) variables, $y$.

The thing is, you’ll need to define the values for a number of output values for $y$, as defined by the function.

Define a grid

First, we define a grid for the input variables.

x <- y <- seq(-5, 5, length = 20)

Compute the function value for each combination of the input variables

Then we compute the $y$ value for each combination of $x$ and $y$, this can be achieved using outer(). That function applies some function on each combination of $x$ and $y$, and that’s just what we would like to achieve.

z <- outer(x,y, FUN = f)

Plot in Base R

Now, let’s plot:

persp(x, y, z)

Plot using Plotly

plot_ly(x = x, y = y, z = z, type = "surface")

Bonus: Contour plot in plotly

plot_ly(x = x, y = y, z = z, type = "contour")