install.packages("ggplot2")
library(ggplot2)
ggplot2: field manual
Welcome!
Welcome to the ggplot2
field manual!
I created this book as a sort of online ‘quick reference’ to help me answer questions like:1
“What graph should I use?”
“What kind of graph is that?
“Can (or should) I build that graph?”
Getting started
Option 1: install
ggplot2
using the code below:
Option 2 (recommended):
ggplot2
is also part of thetidyverse
install.packages("tidyverse") library(tidyverse)
Who this book was written for
I created this resource with the following learner personas in mind:
Garth is a data analyst putting together a slide deck for an upcoming meeting. He had a few statistics courses with R in college, and has picked up additional experience and skills from the different positions he’s held and various online tutorials. He’s currently building the graphs in his slides with
ggplot2
, but had grown tired of them and would like to customize his presentation to make it more engaging.Matilda is a data journalist hoping to add a few graphs to a piece she has been working on. She has 10 years of experience working with WordPress, writes and publishes on her own blog, and has an intermediate understanding of HTML & CSS. However, she has only been programming in R for about 6 months.
Igor is a researcher who has been working in academia for 15 years. He’s comfortable writing R code, knows the kinds of graphs he’d like to build, but he only knows how to build these using the base R graphics. He’d like to learn how to duplicate the graphs he’s already created in base R using
ggplot2
.
Where to learn more
Because this is intended to be a field manual (and not a textbook), I’ve omitted most of the underlying principles and structure of the ggplot2
syntax.
If you’re looking for comprehensive resources on ggplot2
, I recommend the excellent free text, the ggplot2
website, and Data Visualization: a practical guide by Kieran Healy.
If you know the graph you’d like to build, and you’re just looking for the code or package(s) to build it, I’d check out the R graph gallery or R graphics cookbook.
Another question to consider–but not covered in this manual–is, “who will the audience be for this graph?”
Great resources for this include the Insightful Data Visualizations for “Uncreative” R Users course by Albert Rapp, Communicating with Data: The Art of Writing for Data Science by Deborah Nolan and Sara Stoudt, and the Truthful Art, The: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication, by Alberto Cairo.
Most of these questions come from #TidyTuesday↩︎