23 M7A: Data Visualization

This content draws on material from Statistical Inference via Data Science: A ModernDive into R and the Tidyverse by Chester Ismay and Albert Y. Kim, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Changes to the source material include addition of new material; light editing; rearranging, removing, and combining original material; adding and changing links; and adding first-person language from current author.

The resulting content is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

23.1 Introduction

Let’s continue developing your data science toolbox by exploring data visualization. By visualizing data, we gain valuable insights we couldn’t immediately or easily obtain from just looking at the raw data values. We’ll use the ggplot2 package, as it provides an easy way to customize your plots. ggplot2 is rooted in the data visualization theory known as the grammar of graphics, developed by Leland Wilkinson (2005). However, as we recently covered, ggplot2 is included in the tidyverse package, so we’ll actually load that instead.

At their most basic, graphics/plots/charts (you can use these terms more-or-less interchangeably) provide a nice way to explore the patterns in data, such as the presence of outliers, distributions of individual variables, and relationships between groups of variables. Graphics are designed to emphasize the findings and insights you want your audience to understand. This does, however, require a balancing act. On the one hand, you want to highlight as many interesting findings as possible. On the other hand, you don’t want to include so much information that it overwhelms your audience.

As we will see, plots also help us to identify patterns and outliers in our data. We’ll see that a common extension of these ideas is to compare the distribution of one numerical variable, such as what are the center and spread of the values, as we go across the levels of a different categorical variable.

Needed packages

Let’s load all the packages needed for this chapter (this assumes you’ve already installed them). Read Section 8.4 for information on how to install and load R packages.

library(nycflights13)
library(tidyverse)
library(moderndive)

23.2 The grammar of graphics

Let’s start with a discussion of a theoretical framework for data visualization known as “the grammar of graphics.” This framework serves as the foundation for the ggplot2 package which we’ll use extensively in this chapter. Think of how we construct and form sentences in English by combining different elements, like nouns, verbs, articles, subjects, objects, etc. We can’t just combine these elements in any arbitrary order; we must do so following a set of rules known as a linguistic grammar. Similarly to a linguistic grammar, “the grammar of graphics” defines a set of rules for constructing statistical graphics by combining different types of layers. This grammar was created by Leland Wilkinson (2005) and has been implemented in a variety of data visualization software platforms like R, but also Plotly and Tableau.

23.2.1 Components of the grammar

In short, the grammar tells us that:

A statistical graphic is a mapping of data variables to aesthetic attributes of geometric objects.

Specifically, we can break a graphic into the following three essential components:

1. data: the dataset containing the variables of interest.
2. geom: the geometric object in question. This refers to the type of object we can observe in a plot. For example: points, lines, and bars.
3. aes: aesthetic attributes of the geometric object. For example, x/y position, color, shape, and size. Aesthetic attributes are mapped to variables in the dataset.

You might be wondering why I wrote the terms data, geom, and aes in a computer code type font. We’ll see very shortly that we’ll specify the elements of the grammar in R using these terms. However, let’s first break down the grammar with an example.

23.2.2 Gapminder data

In February 2006, a Swedish physician and data advocate named Hans Rosling gave a TED talk titled “The best stats you’ve ever seen” where he presented global economic, health, and development data from the website gapminder.org. For example, for data on 142 countries in 2007, let’s consider only a few countries in Table 23.1 as a peek into the data.

Table 23.1: Table 23.2: Gapminder 2007 Data: First 3 of 142 countries

Country	Continent	Life Expectancy	Population	GDP per Capita
Afghanistan	Asia	43.8	31889923	975
Albania	Europe	76.4	3600523	5937
Algeria	Africa	72.3	33333216	6223

Each row in this table corresponds to a country in 2007. For each row, we have 5 columns:

1. Country: Name of country.
2. Continent: Which of the five continents the country is part of. Note that “Americas” includes countries in both North and South America and that Antarctica is excluded.
3. Life Expectancy: Life expectancy in years.
4. Population: Number of people living in the country.
5. GDP per Capita: Gross domestic product (in US dollars).

Now consider Figure 23.1, which plots this for all 142 of the data’s countries.

Figure 23.1: Life expectancy over GDP per capita in 2007.

Let’s view this plot through the grammar of graphics:

1. The data variable GDP per Capita gets mapped to the x-position aesthetic of the points.
2. The data variable Life Expectancy gets mapped to the y-position aesthetic of the points.
3. The data variable Population gets mapped to the size aesthetic of the points.
4. The data variable Continent gets mapped to the color aesthetic of the points.

We’ll see shortly that data corresponds to the particular data frame where our data is saved and that “data variables” correspond to particular columns in the data frame. Furthermore, the type of geometric object considered in this plot are points. That being said, while in this example we are considering points, graphics are not limited to just points. We can also use lines, bars, and other geometric objects.

Let’s summarize the three essential components of the grammar in Table 23.3:

Table 23.3: Table 23.4: Summary of the grammar of graphics for this plot

data variable	aes	geom
GDP per Capita	x	point
Life Expectancy	y	point
Population	size	point
Continent	color	point

23.2.3 Other components

There are other components of the grammar of graphics we can control as well. As you start to delve deeper into the grammar of graphics, you’ll start to encounter these topics more frequently. In this book, we’ll keep things simple and only work with these two additional components:

• faceting breaks up a plot into several plots split by the values of another variable (Section 23.7)
• position adjustments for barplots (Section 23.9)

Other more complex components like scales and coordinate systems are left for a more advanced text such as R for Data Science (Grolemund & Wickham, 2017). Generally speaking, the grammar of graphics allows for a high degree of customization of plots and also a consistent framework for easily updating and modifying them.

23.2.4 ggplot2 package

In this book, we will use the ggplot2 package for data visualization, which is an implementation of the grammar of graphics for R. As we noted earlier, a lot of the previous section was written in a computer code type font. This is because the various components of the grammar of graphics are specified in the ggplot() function included in the ggplot2 package. For the purposes of this book, we’ll always provide the ggplot() function with the following arguments (i.e., inputs) at a minimum:

• The data frame where the variables exist: the data argument.
• The mapping of the variables to aesthetic attributes: the mapping argument which specifies the aesthetic attributes involved.

After we’ve specified these components, we then add layers to the plot using the + sign. The most essential layer to add to a plot is the layer that specifies which type of geometric object we want the plot to involve: points, lines, bars, and others. Other layers we can add to a plot include the plot title, axes labels, visual themes for the plots, and facets (which we’ll see in Section 23.7).

Let’s now put the theory of the grammar of graphics into practice.

23.3 Five named graphs - the 5NG

In order to keep things simple in this book, we will only focus on five different types of graphics, each with a commonly given name. We term these “five named graphs” or in abbreviated form, the 5NG:

1. scatterplots
2. linegraphs
3. histograms
4. boxplots
5. barplots

I’ll also present some variations of these plots, but with this basic repertoire of five graphics in your toolbox, you can visualize a wide array of different variable types. Note that certain plots are only appropriate for categorical variables, while others are only appropriate for numerical variables.

23.4 5NG#1: Scatterplots

The simplest of the 5NG are scatterplots, also called bivariate plots. They allow you to visualize the relationship between two numerical variables. While you may already be familiar with scatterplots, let’s view them through the lens of the grammar of graphics we presented in Section 23.2. Specifically, we will visualize the relationship between the following two numerical variables in the alaska_flights data frame included in the moderndive package:

1. dep_delay: departure delay on the horizontal “x” axis and
2. arr_delay: arrival delay on the vertical “y” axis

for Alaska Airlines flights leaving NYC in 2013. In other words, alaska_flights does not consist of all flights that left NYC in 2013, but rather only those flights where carrier is AS (which is Alaska Airlines’ carrier code).

23.4.1 Scatterplots via geom_point

Let’s now go over the code that will create the desired scatterplot, while keeping in mind the grammar of graphics framework I introduced in Section 23.2. Let’s take a look at the code and break it down piece-by-piece.

ggplot(data = alaska_flights, mapping = aes(x = dep_delay, y = arr_delay)) + 
  geom_point()

Within the ggplot() function, we specify two of the components of the grammar of graphics as arguments (i.e., inputs):

1. The data as the alaska_flights data frame via data = alaska_flights.
2. The aesthetic mapping by setting mapping = aes(x = dep_delay, y = arr_delay). Specifically, the variable dep_delay maps to the x position aesthetic, while the variable arr_delay maps to the y position.

We then add a layer to the ggplot() function call using the + sign. The added layer in question specifies the third component of the grammar: the geometric object. In this case, the geometric object is set to be points by specifying geom_point(). After running these two lines of code in your console, you’ll notice two outputs: a warning message and the graphic shown in Figure 23.2.

Warning: Removed 5 rows containing missing values (`geom_point()`).

Figure 23.2: Arrival delays versus departure delays for Alaska Airlines flights from NYC in 2013.

Let’s first unpack the graphic in Figure 23.2. Observe that a positive relationship exists between dep_delay and arr_delay: as departure delays increase, arrival delays tend to also increase. Observe also the large mass of points clustered near (0, 0), the point indicating flights that neither departed nor arrived late.

Let’s turn our attention to the warning message. R is alerting us to the fact that five rows were ignored due to them being missing. For these 5 rows, either the value for dep_delay or arr_delay or both were missing (recorded in R as NA), and thus these rows were ignored in our plot.

Before we continue, let’s make a few more observations about this code that created the scatterplot. Note that the + sign comes at the end of lines, and not at the beginning. You’ll get an error in R if you put it at the beginning of a line. When adding layers to a plot, you are encouraged to start a new line after the + (by pressing the Return/Enter button on your keyboard) so that the code for each layer is on a new line. As we add more and more layers to plots, you’ll see this will greatly improve the legibility of your code.

To stress the importance of adding the layer specifying the geometric object, consider Figure 23.3 where no layers are added. Because the geometric object was not specified, we have a blank plot. At the risk of stating the obvious, this is not very useful!

ggplot(data = alaska_flights, mapping = aes(x = dep_delay, y = arr_delay))

Figure 23.3: A plot with no layers.

23.4.2 Overplotting

The large mass of points near (0, 0) in Figure 23.2 can cause some confusion since it is hard to tell the true number of points that are plotted. This is the result of a phenomenon called overplotting. As one may guess, this corresponds to points being plotted on top of each other over and over again. When overplotting occurs, it is difficult to know the number of points being plotted. There are two methods to address the issue of overplotting. Either by

1. Adjusting the transparency of the points or
2. Adding a little random “jitter”, or random “nudges”, to each of the points.

Method 1: Changing the transparency

The first way of addressing overplotting is to change the transparency/opacity of the points by setting the alpha argument in geom_point(). We can change the alpha argument to be any value between 0 and 1, where 0 sets the points to be 100% transparent and 1 sets the points to be 100% opaque. By default, alpha is set to 1. In other words, if we don’t explicitly set an alpha value, R will use alpha = 1.

Note how the following code is identical to the code in Section 23.4 that created the scatterplot with overplotting, but with alpha = 0.2 added to the geom_point() function:

ggplot(data = alaska_flights, mapping = aes(x = dep_delay, y = arr_delay)) + 
  geom_point(alpha = 0.2)

Figure 23.4: Arrival vs. departure delays scatterplot with alpha = 0.2.

The key feature to note in Figure 23.4 is that the transparency of the points is cumulative: areas with a high-degree of overplotting are darker, whereas areas with a lower degree are less dark. Note furthermore that there is no aes() surrounding alpha = 0.2. This is because we are not mapping a variable to an aesthetic attribute, but rather merely changing the default setting of alpha. In fact, you’ll receive an error if you try to change the second line to read geom_point(aes(alpha = 0.2)).

Method 2: Jittering the points

The second way of addressing overplotting is by jittering all the points. This means giving each point a small “nudge” in a random direction. You can think of “jittering” as shaking the points around a bit on the plot. Let’s illustrate using a simple example first. Say we have a data frame with 4 identical rows of x and y values: (0,0), (0,0), (0,0), and (0,0). In Figure 23.5, we present both the regular scatterplot of these 4 points (on the left) and its jittered counterpart (on the right).

Figure 23.5: Regular and jittered scatterplot.

In the left-hand regular scatterplot, observe that the 4 points are superimposed on top of each other. While we know there are 4 values being plotted, this fact might not be apparent to others. In the right-hand jittered scatterplot, it is now plainly evident that this plot involves four points since each point is given a random “nudge.”

Keep in mind, however, that jittering is strictly a visualization tool; even after creating a jittered scatterplot, the original values saved in the data frame remain unchanged.

To create a jittered scatterplot, instead of using geom_point(), we use geom_jitter(). Observe how the following code is very similar to the code that created the scatterplot with overplotting in Subsection 23.4.1, but with geom_point() replaced with geom_jitter().

ggplot(data = alaska_flights, mapping = aes(x = dep_delay, y = arr_delay)) + 
  geom_jitter(width = 30, height = 30)

Figure 23.6: Arrival versus departure delays jittered scatterplot.

In order to specify how much jitter to add, we adjusted the width and height arguments to geom_jitter(). This corresponds to how hard you’d like to shake the plot in horizontal x-axis units and vertical y-axis units, respectively. In this case, both axes are in minutes. How much jitter should we add using the width and height arguments? On the one hand, it is important to add just enough jitter to break any overlap in points, but on the other hand, not so much that we completely alter the original pattern in points.

As can be seen in the resulting Figure 23.6, in this case jittering doesn’t really provide much new insight. In this particular case, it can be argued that changing the transparency of the points by setting alpha proved more effective. When would it be better to use a jittered scatterplot? When would it be better to alter the points’ transparency? There is no single right answer that applies to all situations. You need to make a subjective choice and own that choice. When confronted with overplotting, you might make both types of plots and see which one better emphasizes the point you are trying to make.

23.4.3 Summary

Scatterplots display the relationship between two numerical variables. They are among the most commonly used plots because they can provide an immediate way to see the trend in one numerical variable versus another. However, if you try to create a scatterplot where either one of the two variables is not numerical, you might get strange results. Be careful!

With medium to large datasets, you may need to play around with the different modifications to scatterplots we saw such as changing the transparency/opacity of the points or by jittering the points. This tweaking is often a fun part of data visualization, since you’ll have the chance to see different relationships emerge as you tinker with your plots.

23.5 5NG#2: Linegraphs

The next of the five named graphs are linegraphs. Linegraphs show the relationship between two numerical variables when the variable on the x-axis, also called the explanatory variable, is of a sequential nature. In other words, there is an inherent ordering to the variable.

The most common examples of linegraphs have some notion of time on the x-axis: hours, days, weeks, years, etc. Since time is sequential, we connect consecutive observations of the variable on the y-axis with a line. Linegraphs that have some notion of time on the x-axis are also called time series plots. Let’s illustrate linegraphs using another dataset in the nycflights13 package: the weather data frame.

Let’s explore the weather data frame from the nycflights13 package by running View(weather) and glimpse(weather). Furthermore let’s read the associated help file by running ?weather to bring up the help file.

Observe that there is a variable called temp of hourly temperature recordings in Fahrenheit at weather stations near all three major airports in New York City: Newark (origin code EWR), John F. Kennedy International (JFK), and LaGuardia (LGA).

However, instead of considering hourly temperatures for all days in 2013 for all three airports, for simplicity let’s only consider hourly temperatures at Newark airport for the first 15 days in January. This data is accessible in the early_january_weather data frame included in the moderndive package. In other words, early_january_weather contains hourly weather observations for origin equal to EWR (Newark’s airport code), month equal to 1, and day less than or equal to 15.

23.5.1 Linegraphs via geom_line

Let’s create a time series plot of the hourly temperatures saved in the early_january_weather data frame by using geom_line() to create a linegraph, instead of using geom_point() like we used previously to create scatterplots:

ggplot(data = early_january_weather, 
       mapping = aes(x = time_hour, y = temp)) +
  geom_line()

Figure 23.7: Hourly temperature in Newark for January 1-15, 2013.

Much as with the ggplot() code that created the scatterplot of departure and arrival delays for Alaska Airlines flights in Figure 23.2, let’s break down this code piece-by-piece in terms of the grammar of graphics:

Within the ggplot() function call, we specify two of the components of the grammar of graphics as arguments:

1. The data to be the early_january_weather data frame by setting data = early_january_weather.
2. The aesthetic mapping by setting mapping = aes(x = time_hour, y = temp). Specifically, the variable time_hour maps to the x position aesthetic, while the variable temp maps to the y position aesthetic.

We add a layer to the ggplot() function call using the + sign. The layer in question specifies the third component of the grammar: the geometric object in question. In this case, the geometric object is a line set by specifying geom_line().

23.5.2 Summary

Linegraphs, just like scatterplots, display the relationship between two numerical variables. However, it is preferred to use linegraphs over scatterplots when the variable on the x-axis (i.e., the explanatory variable) has an inherent ordering, such as some notion of time.

23.6 5NG#3: Histograms

Let’s consider the temp variable in the weather data frame once again, but unlike with the linegraphs in Section 23.5, let’s say we don’t care about its relationship with time, but rather we only care about how the values of temp distribute. In other words:

1. What are the smallest and largest values?
2. What is the “center” or “most typical” value?
3. How do the values spread out?
4. What are frequent and infrequent values?

One way to visualize this distribution of this single variable temp is to plot them on a horizontal line as we do in Figure 23.8:

Figure 23.8: Plot of hourly temperature recordings from NYC in 2013.

This gives us a general idea of how the values of temp distribute: observe that temperatures vary from around 11°F (-11°C) up to 100°F (38°C). Furthermore, there appear to be more recorded temperatures between 40°F and 60°F than outside this range. However, because of the high degree of overplotting in the points, it’s hard to get a sense of exactly how many values are between say 50°F and 55°F.

What is commonly produced instead of Figure 23.8 is known as a histogram. A histogram is a plot that visualizes the distribution of a numerical value as follows:

1. We first cut up the x-axis into a series of bins, where each bin represents a range of values.
2. For each bin, we count the number of observations that fall in the range corresponding to that bin.
3. Then for each bin, we draw a bar whose height marks the corresponding count.

Let’s drill-down on an example of a histogram, shown in Figure 23.9.

Figure 23.9: Example histogram.

Let’s focus only on temperatures between 30°F (-1°C) and 60°F (15°C) for now. Observe that there are three bins of equal width between 30°F and 60°F. Thus we have three bins of width 10°F each: one bin for the 30-40°F range, another bin for the 40-50°F range, and another bin for the 50-60°F range. Since:

1. The bin for the 30-40°F range has a height of around 5000. In other words, around 5000 of the hourly temperature recordings are between 30°F and 40°F.
2. The bin for the 40-50°F range has a height of around 4300. In other words, around 4300 of the hourly temperature recordings are between 40°F and 50°F.
3. The bin for the 50-60°F range has a height of around 3500. In other words, around 3500 of the hourly temperature recordings are between 50°F and 60°F.

All nine bins spanning 10°F to 100°F on the x-axis have this interpretation.

23.6.1 Histograms via geom_histogram

Let’s now present the ggplot() code to plot your first histogram! Unlike with scatterplots and linegraphs, there is now only one variable being mapped in aes(): the single numerical variable temp. The y-aesthetic of a histogram, the count of the observations in each bin, gets computed for you automatically. Furthermore, the geometric object layer is now a geom_histogram(). After running the following code, you’ll see the histogram in Figure 23.10 as well as warning messages. We’ll discuss the warning messages first.

ggplot(data = weather, mapping = aes(x = temp)) +
  geom_histogram()

`stat_bin()` using `bins = 30`. Pick better value with `binwidth`.

Warning: Removed 1 rows containing non-finite values (`stat_bin()`).

Figure 23.10: Histogram of hourly temperatures at three NYC airports.

The first message is telling us that the histogram was constructed using bins = 30 for 30 equally spaced bins. This is known in computer programming as a default value; unless you override this default number of bins with a number you specify, R will choose 30 by default. We’ll see in the next section how to change the number of bins to another value than the default.

The second message is telling us something similar to the warning message we received when we ran the code to create a scatterplot of departure and arrival delays for Alaska Airlines flights in Figure 23.2: that because one row has a missing NA value for temp, it was omitted from the histogram. R is just giving us a friendly heads up that this was the case.

Now let’s unpack the resulting histogram in Figure 23.10. Observe that values less than 25°F as well as values above 80°F are rather rare. However, because of the large number of bins, it’s hard to get a sense for which range of temperatures is spanned by each bin; everything is one giant amorphous blob. So let’s add white vertical borders demarcating the bins by adding a color = "white" argument to geom_histogram() and ignore the warning about setting the number of bins to a better value:

ggplot(data = weather, mapping = aes(x = temp)) +
  geom_histogram(color = "white")

Figure 23.11: Histogram of hourly temperatures at three NYC airports with white borders.

We now have an easier time associating ranges of temperatures to each of the bins in Figure 23.11. We can also vary the color of the bars by setting the fill argument. For example, you can set the bin colors to be “blue steel” by setting fill = "steelblue":

ggplot(data = weather, mapping = aes(x = temp)) +
  geom_histogram(color = "white", fill = "steelblue")

If you’re curious, run colors() to see all 657 possible choice of colors in R!

23.6.2 Adjusting the bins

Observe in Figure 23.11 that in the 50-75°F range there appear to be roughly 8 bins. Thus each bin has width 25 divided by 8, or 3.125°F, which is not a very easily interpretable range to work with. Let’s improve this by adjusting the number of bins in our histogram in one of two ways:

1. By adjusting the number of bins via the bins argument to geom_histogram().
2. By adjusting the width of the bins via the binwidth argument to geom_histogram().

Using the first method, we have the power to specify how many bins we would like to cut the x-axis up in. As mentioned in the previous section, the default number of bins is 30. We can override this default, to say 40 bins, as follows:

ggplot(data = weather, mapping = aes(x = temp)) +
  geom_histogram(bins = 40, color = "white")

Using the second method, instead of specifying the number of bins, we specify the width of the bins by using the binwidth argument in the geom_histogram() layer. For example, let’s set the width of each bin to be 10°F.

ggplot(data = weather, mapping = aes(x = temp)) +
  geom_histogram(binwidth = 10, color = "white")

We compare both resulting histograms side-by-side in Figure 23.12.

Figure 23.12: Setting histogram bins in two ways.

23.6.3 Summary

Histograms, unlike scatterplots and linegraphs, present information on only a single numerical variable. Specifically, they are visualizations of the distribution of the numerical variable in question.

23.7 Facets

Before continuing with the next of the 5NG, let’s briefly introduce a new concept called faceting. Faceting is used when we’d like to split a particular visualization by the values of another variable. This will create multiple copies of the same type of plot with matching x and y axes, but whose content will differ.

For example, suppose we were interested in looking at how the histogram of hourly temperature recordings at the three NYC airports we saw in Figure 23.9 differed in each month. We could “split” this histogram by the 12 possible months in a given year. In other words, we would plot histograms of temp for each month separately. We do this by adding facet_wrap(~ month) layer. Note the ~ is a “tilde” and can generally be found on the key next to the “1” key on US keyboards. The tilde is required and you’ll receive the error Error in as.quoted(facets) : object 'month' not found if you don’t include it here.

ggplot(data = weather, mapping = aes(x = temp)) +
  geom_histogram(binwidth = 5, color = "white") +
  facet_wrap(~ month)

Figure 23.13: Faceted histogram of hourly temperatures by month.

We can also specify the number of rows and columns in the grid by using the nrow and ncol arguments inside of facet_wrap(). For example, say we would like our faceted histogram to have 4 rows instead of 3. We simply add an nrow = 4 argument to facet_wrap(~ month).

ggplot(data = weather, mapping = aes(x = temp)) +
  geom_histogram(binwidth = 5, color = "white") +
  facet_wrap(~ month, nrow = 4)

Figure 23.14: Faceted histogram with 4 instead of 3 rows.

Observe in both Figures 23.13 and 23.14 that as we might expect in the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures tend to be higher in the summer months, while they tend to be lower in the winter.

23.8 5NG#4: Boxplots

While faceted histograms are one type of visualization used to compare the distribution of a numerical variable split by the values of another variable, another type of visualization that achieves this same goal is a side-by-side boxplot. A boxplot is constructed from the information provided in the five-number summary of a numerical variable.

To keep things simple for now, let’s only consider the 2141 hourly temperature recordings for the month of November, each represented as a jittered point in Figure 23.15.

Figure 23.15: November temperatures represented as jittered points.

These 2141 observations have the following five-number summary:

1. Minimum: 21°F
2. First quartile (25th percentile): 36°F
3. Median (second quartile, 50th percentile): 45°F
4. Third quartile (75th percentile): 52°F
5. Maximum: 71°F

We’ll read more about what each of these numbers represent in a bit!

In the leftmost plot of Figure 23.16, let’s mark these 5 values with dashed horizontal lines on top of the 2141 points. In the middle plot of Figure 23.16 let’s add the boxplot. In the rightmost plot of Figure 23.16, let’s remove the points and the dashed horizontal lines for clarity’s sake.

Figure 23.16: Building up a boxplot of November temperatures.

What the boxplot does is visually summarize the 2141 points by cutting the 2141 temperature recordings into quartiles at the dashed lines, where each quartile contains roughly 2141 \(\div\) 4 \(\approx\) 535 observations. Thus

1. 25% of points fall below the bottom edge of the box, which is the first quartile of 36°F. In other words, 25% of observations were below 36°F.
2. 25% of points fall between the bottom edge of the box and the solid middle line, which is the median of 45°F. Thus, 25% of observations were between 36°F and 45°F and 50% of observations were below 45°F.
3. 25% of points fall between the solid middle line and the top edge of the box, which is the third quartile of 52°F. It follows that 25% of observations were between 45°F and 52°F and 75% of observations were below 52°F.
4. 25% of points fall above the top edge of the box. In other words, 25% of observations were above 52°F.
5. The middle 50% of points lie within the interquartile range (IQR) between the first and third quartile. Thus, the IQR for this example is 52 - 36 = 16°F. The interquartile range is a measure of a numerical variable’s spread.

Furthermore, in the rightmost plot of Figure 23.16, we see the whiskers of the boxplot. The whiskers stick out from either end of the box all the way to the minimum and maximum observed temperatures of 21°F and 71°F, respectively. However, the whiskers don’t always extend to the smallest and largest observed values as they do here. They in fact extend no more than 1.5 \(\times\) the interquartile range from either end of the box. In this case of the November temperatures, no more than 1.5 \(\times\) 16°F = 24°F from either end of the box. Any observed values outside this range get marked with points called outliers, which we’ll see in the next section.

23.8.1 Boxplots via geom_boxplot

Let’s now create a side-by-side boxplot of hourly temperatures split by the 12 months as we did previously with the faceted histograms. We do this by mapping the month variable to the x-position aesthetic, the temp variable to the y-position aesthetic, and by adding a geom_boxplot() layer:

ggplot(data = weather, mapping = aes(x = month, y = temp)) +
  geom_boxplot()

Figure 23.17: Invalid boxplot specification.

Warning messages:
1: Continuous x aesthetic -- did you forget aes(group=...)? 
2: Removed 1 rows containing non-finite values (stat_boxplot). 

Observe in Figure 23.17 that this plot does not provide information about temperature separated by month. The first warning message clues us in as to why. It is telling us that we have a “continuous”, or numerical variable, on the x-position aesthetic. Boxplots, however, require a categorical variable to be mapped to the x-position aesthetic. The second warning message is identical to the warning message when plotting a histogram of hourly temperatures: that one of the values was recorded as NA missing.

We can convert the numerical variable month into a factor categorical variable by using the factor() function. So after applying factor(month), month goes from having numerical values just the 1, 2, …, and 12 to having an associated ordering. With this ordering, ggplot() now knows how to work with this variable to produce the needed plot.

ggplot(data = weather, mapping = aes(x = factor(month), y = temp)) +
  geom_boxplot()

Figure 23.18: Side-by-side boxplot of temperature split by month.

The resulting Figure 23.18 shows 12 separate “box and whiskers” plots similar to the rightmost plot of Figure 23.16 of only November temperatures. Thus the different boxplots are shown “side-by-side.”

• The “box” portions of the visualization represent the 1st quartile, the median (the 2nd quartile), and the 3rd quartile.
• The height of each box (the value of the 3rd quartile minus the value of the 1st quartile) is the interquartile range (IQR). It is a measure of the spread of the middle 50% of values, with longer boxes indicating more variability.
• The “whisker” portions of these plots extend out from the bottoms and tops of the boxes and represent points less than the 25th percentile and greater than the 75th percentiles, respectively. They’re set to extend out no more than \(1.5 \times IQR\) units away from either end of the boxes. We say “no more than” because the ends of the whiskers have to correspond to observed temperatures. The length of these whiskers show how the data outside the middle 50% of values vary, with longer whiskers indicating more variability.
• The dots representing values falling outside the whiskers are called outliers. These can be thought of as anomalous (“out-of-the-ordinary”) values.

It is important to keep in mind that the definition of an outlier is somewhat arbitrary and not absolute. In this case, they are defined by the length of the whiskers, which are no more than \(1.5 \times IQR\) units long for each boxplot. Looking at this side-by-side plot we can see, as expected, that summer months (6 through 8) have higher median temperatures as evidenced by the higher solid lines in the middle of the boxes. We can easily compare temperatures across months by drawing imaginary horizontal lines across the plot. Furthermore, the heights of the 12 boxes as quantified by the interquartile ranges are informative too; they tell us about variability, or spread, of temperatures recorded in a given month.

23.8.2 Summary

Side-by-side boxplots provide us with a way to compare the distribution of a numerical variable across multiple values of another variable. One can see where the median falls across the different groups by comparing the solid lines in the center of the boxes.

To study the spread of a numerical variable within one of the boxes, look at both the length of the box and also how far the whiskers extend from either end of the box. Outliers are even more easily identified when looking at a boxplot than when looking at a histogram as they are marked with distinct points.

23.9 5NG#5: Barplots

Both histograms and boxplots are tools to visualize the distribution of numerical variables. Another commonly desired task is to visualize the distribution of a categorical variable. This is a simpler task, as we are simply counting different categories within a categorical variable, also known as the levels of the categorical variable. Often the best way to visualize these different counts, also known as frequencies, is with barplots (also called barcharts).

One complication, however, is how your data is represented. Is the categorical variable of interest “pre-counted” or not? For example, run the following code that manually creates two data frames representing a collection of fruit: 3 apples and 2 oranges.

fruits <- tibble(
  fruit = c("apple", "apple", "orange", "apple", "orange")
)
fruits_counted <- tibble(
  fruit = c("apple", "orange"),
  number = c(3, 2)
)

We see both the fruits and fruits_counted data frames represent the same collection of fruit. Whereas fruits just lists the fruit individually…

# A tibble: 5 × 1
  fruit 
  <chr> 
1 apple 
2 apple 
3 orange
4 apple 
5 orange

… fruits_counted has a variable count which represent the “pre-counted” values of each fruit.

# A tibble: 2 × 2
  fruit  number
  <chr>   <dbl>
1 apple       3
2 orange      2

Depending on how your categorical data is represented, you’ll need to add a different geometric layer type to your ggplot() to create a barplot, as we now explore.

23.9.1 Barplots via geom_bar or geom_col

Let’s generate barplots using these two different representations of the same basket of fruit: 3 apples and 2 oranges. Using the fruits data frame where all 5 fruits are listed individually in 5 rows, we map the fruit variable to the x-position aesthetic and add a geom_bar() layer:

ggplot(data = fruits, mapping = aes(x = fruit)) +
  geom_bar()

Figure 23.19: Barplot when counts are not pre-counted.

However, using the fruits_counted data frame where the fruits have been “pre-counted”, we once again map the fruit variable to the x-position aesthetic, but here we also map the count variable to the y-position aesthetic, and add a geom_col() layer instead.

ggplot(data = fruits_counted, mapping = aes(x = fruit, y = number)) +
  geom_col()

Figure 23.20: Barplot when counts are pre-counted.

Compare the barplots in Figures 23.19 and 23.20. They are identical because they reflect counts of the same five fruits. However, depending on how our categorical data is represented, either “pre-counted” or not, we must add a different geom layer. When the categorical variable whose distribution you want to visualize

• Is not pre-counted in your data frame, we use geom_bar().
• Is pre-counted in your data frame, we use geom_col() with the y-position aesthetic mapped to the variable that has the counts.

Let’s now go back to the flights data frame in the nycflights13 package and visualize the distribution of the categorical variable carrier. In other words, let’s visualize the number of domestic flights out of New York City each airline company flew in 2013. Recall from Subsection 8.5.3 when you first explored the flights data frame, you saw that each row corresponds to a flight. In other words, the flights data frame is more like the fruits data frame than the fruits_counted data frame because the flights have not been pre-counted by carrier. Thus we should use geom_bar() instead of geom_col() to create a barplot. Much like a geom_histogram(), there is only one variable in the aes() aesthetic mapping: the variable carrier gets mapped to the x-position. As a difference though, histograms have bars that touch whereas bar graphs have white space between the bars going from left to right.

ggplot(data = flights, mapping = aes(x = carrier)) +
  geom_bar()

Figure 23.21: Number of flights departing NYC in 2013 by airline using geom_bar().

Observe in Figure 23.21 that United Airlines (UA), JetBlue Airways (B6), and ExpressJet Airlines (EV) had the most flights depart NYC in 2013. If you don’t know which airlines correspond to which carrier codes, then run View(airlines) to see a directory of airlines. For example, B6 is JetBlue Airways. Alternatively, say you had a data frame where the number of flights for each carrier was pre-counted as in Table 23.5.

Table 23.5: Table 23.6: Number of flights pre-counted for each carrier

carrier	number
9E	18460
AA	32729
AS	714
B6	54635
DL	48110
EV	54173
F9	685
FL	3260
HA	342
MQ	26397
OO	32
UA	58665
US	20536
VX	5162
WN	12275
YV	601

In order to create a barplot visualizing the distribution of the categorical variable carrier in this case, we would now use geom_col() instead of geom_bar(), with an additional y = number in the aesthetic mapping on top of the x = carrier. The resulting barplot would be identical to Figure 23.21.

23.9.2 Avoid pie charts!

One of the most common plots used to visualize the distribution of categorical data is the pie chart. While they may seem harmless enough, pie charts actually present a problem in that humans are unable to judge angles well. As Naomi Robbins (2013) describes in her book, Creating More Effective Graphs, we overestimate angles greater than 90 degrees and we underestimate angles less than 90 degrees. In other words, it is difficult for us to determine the relative size of one piece of the pie compared to another.

Let’s examine the same data used in our previous barplot of the number of flights departing NYC by airline in Figure 23.21, but this time we will use a pie chart in Figure 23.22. Try to answer the following questions:

• How much larger is the portion of the pie for ExpressJet Airlines (EV) compared to US Airways (US)?
• What is the third largest carrier in terms of departing flights?
• How many carriers have fewer flights than United Airlines (UA)?

Figure 23.22: The dreaded pie chart.

While it is quite difficult to answer these questions when looking at the pie chart in Figure 23.22, we can much more easily answer these questions using the barchart in Figure 23.21. This is true since barplots present the information in a way such that comparisons between categories can be made with single horizontal lines, whereas pie charts present the information in a way such that comparisons must be made by comparing angles.

23.9.3 Two categorical variables

Barplots are a very common way to visualize the frequency of different categories, or levels, of a single categorical variable. Another use of barplots is to visualize the joint distribution of two categorical variables at the same time. Let’s examine the joint distribution of outgoing domestic flights from NYC by carrier as well as origin. In other words, the number of flights for each carrier and origin combination.

For example, the number of WestJet flights from JFK, the number of WestJet flights from LGA, the number of WestJet flights from EWR, the number of American Airlines flights from JFK, and so on. Recall the ggplot() code that created the barplot of carrier frequency in Figure 23.21:

ggplot(data = flights, mapping = aes(x = carrier)) + 
  geom_bar()

We can now map the additional variable origin by adding a fill = origin inside the aes() aesthetic mapping.

ggplot(data = flights, mapping = aes(x = carrier, fill = origin)) +
  geom_bar()

Figure 23.23: Stacked barplot of flight amount by carrier and origin.

Figure 23.23 is an example of a stacked barplot. While simple to make, in certain aspects it is not ideal. For example, it is difficult to compare the heights of the different colors between the bars, corresponding to comparing the number of flights from each origin airport between the carriers.

Before we continue, let’s address some common points of confusion among new R users. First, the fill aesthetic corresponds to the color used to fill the bars, while the color aesthetic corresponds to the color of the outline of the bars. This is identical to how we added color to our histogram in Subsection 23.6.1: we set the outline of the bars to white by setting color = "white" and the colors of the bars to blue steel by setting fill = "steelblue". Observe in Figure 23.24 that mapping origin to color and not fill yields grey bars with different colored outlines.

ggplot(data = flights, mapping = aes(x = carrier, color = origin)) +
  geom_bar()

Figure 23.24: Stacked barplot with color aesthetic used instead of fill.

Second, note that fill is another aesthetic mapping much like x-position; thus we were careful to include it within the parentheses of the aes() mapping. The following code, where the fill aesthetic is specified outside the aes() mapping will yield an error. This is a fairly common error that new ggplot users make:

ggplot(data = flights, mapping = aes(x = carrier), fill = origin) +
  geom_bar()

An alternative to stacked barplots are side-by-side barplots, also known as dodged barplots, as seen in Figure 23.25. The code to create a side-by-side barplot is identical to the code to create a stacked barplot, but with a position = "dodge" argument added to geom_bar(). In other words, we are overriding the default barplot type, which is a stacked barplot, and specifying it to be a side-by-side barplot instead.

ggplot(data = flights, mapping = aes(x = carrier, fill = origin)) +
  geom_bar(position = "dodge")

Figure 23.25: Side-by-side barplot comparing number of flights by carrier and origin.

Note the width of the bars for AS, F9, FL, HA and YV is different than the others. We can make one tweak to the position argument to get them to be the same size in terms of width as the other bars by using the more robust position_dodge() function.

ggplot(data = flights, mapping = aes(x = carrier, fill = origin)) +
  geom_bar(position = position_dodge(preserve = "single"))

Figure 23.26: Side-by-side barplot comparing number of flights by carrier and origin (with formatting tweak).

Lastly, another type of barplot is a faceted barplot. Recall in Section 23.7 we visualized the distribution of hourly temperatures at the 3 NYC airports split by month using facets. We apply the same principle to our barplot visualizing the frequency of carrier split by origin: instead of mapping origin to fill we include it as the variable to create small multiples of the plot across the levels of origin.

ggplot(data = flights, mapping = aes(x = carrier)) +
  geom_bar() +
  facet_wrap(~ origin, ncol = 1)

Figure 23.27: Faceted barplot comparing the number of flights by carrier and origin.

23.9.4 Summary

Barplots are a common way of displaying the distribution of a categorical variable, or in other words the frequency with which the different categories (also called levels) occur. They are easy to understand and make it easy to make comparisons across levels. Furthermore, when trying to visualize the relationship of two categorical variables, you have many options: stacked barplots, side-by-side barplots, and faceted barplots. Depending on what aspect of the relationship you are trying to emphasize, you will need to make a choice between these three types of barplots and own that choice.

23.10 Conclusion

23.10.1 Summary table

Let’s recap all five of the five named graphs (5NG) in Table 23.7 summarizing their differences. Using these 5NG, you’ll be able to visualize the distributions and relationships of variables contained in a wide array of datasets. This will be even more the case as we start to map more variables to more of each geometric object’s aesthetic attribute options, further unlocking the awesome power of the ggplot2 package.

Table 23.7: Summary of Five Named Graphs

	Named graph	Shows	Geometric object	Notes
1	Scatterplot	Relationship between 2 numerical variables	geom_point()
2	Linegraph	Relationship between 2 numerical variables	geom_line()	Used when there is a sequential order to x-variable, e.g., time
3	Histogram	Distribution of 1 numerical variable	geom_histogram()	Facetted histograms show the distribution of 1 numerical variable split by the values of another variable
4	Boxplot	Distribution of 1 numerical variable split by the values of another variable	geom_boxplot()
5	Barplot	Distribution of 1 categorical variable	geom_bar() when counts are not pre-counted, geom_col() when counts are pre-counted	Stacked, side-by-side, and faceted barplots show the joint distribution of 2 categorical variables

23.10.2 Function argument specification

Let’s go over some important points about specifying the arguments (i.e., inputs) to functions. Run the following two segments of code:

# Segment 1:
ggplot(data = flights, mapping = aes(x = carrier)) +
  geom_bar()

# Segment 2:
ggplot(flights, aes(x = carrier)) +
  geom_bar()

You’ll notice that both code segments create the same barplot, even though in the second segment we omitted the data = and mapping = code argument names. This is because the ggplot() function by default assumes that the data argument comes first and the mapping argument comes second. As long as you specify the data frame in question first and the aes() mapping second, you can omit the explicit statement of the argument names data = and mapping =.

Going forward for the rest of this book, all ggplot() code will be like the second segment: with the data = and mapping = explicit naming of the argument omitted with the default ordering of arguments respected. This is for brevity’s sake; it’s common to see this style when reviewing other R users’ code.

23.10.3 Additional resources

If you want to further unlock the power of the ggplot2 package for data visualization, we suggest that you check out RStudio’s “Data Visualization with ggplot2” cheatsheet. This cheatsheet summarizes much more than what we’ve discussed in this chapter. In particular, it presents many more than the 5 geometric objects we covered in this chapter while providing quick and easy to read visual descriptions. For all the geometric objects, it also lists all the possible aesthetic attributes one can tweak. In the current version of RStudio in late 2019, you can access this cheatsheet by going to the RStudio Menu Bar -> Help -> Cheat Sheets -> “Data Visualization with ggplot2.” You can see a preview in the figure below. Alternatively, you can preview the cheat sheet by going to the ggplot2 Github page with this link.

Figure 23.28: Data Visualization with ggplot2 cheatsheet.

23.11 References

Grolemund, G., and Wickham, H. (2017). R for Data Science (1st edition). O’Reilly Media. https://r4ds.had.co.nz/.

Robbins, N. (2013). Creating more effective graphs. Chart House.

Wilkinson, L. 2005. The grammar of graphics (Statistics and computing). Springer-Verlag.