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  3. Introduction to Data Visualization with ggplot2
  • 1

    Introduction

    Free

    In this chapter we’ll get you into the right frame of mind for developing meaningful visualizations with R. You’ll understand that as a communications tool, visualizations require you to think about your audience first. You’ll also be introduced to the basics of ggplot2 - the 7 different grammatical elements (layers) and aesthetic mappings.

  • 2

    Aesthetics

    Aesthetic mappings are the cornerstone of the grammar of graphics plotting concept. This is where the magic happens - converting continuous and categorical data into visual scales that provide access to a large amount of information in a very short time. In this chapter you’ll understand how to choose the best aesthetic mappings for your data.

  • 3

    Geometries

    A plot’s geometry dictates what visual elements will be used. In this chapter, we’ll familiarize you with the geometries used in the three most common plot types you’ll encounter - scatter plots, bar charts and line plots. We’ll look at a variety of different ways to construct these plots.

  • 4

    Themes

    In this chapter, we’ll explore how understanding the structure of your data makes data visualization much easier. Plus, it’s time to make our plots pretty. This is the last step in the data viz process. The Themes layer will enable you to make publication quality plots directly in R. In the next course we'll look at some extra layers to add more variables to your plots.

Initializing

Exercise

Modifying theme elements

Many plot elements have multiple properties that can be set. For example, line elements in the plot such as axes and gridlines have a color, a thickness (size), and a line type (solid line, dashed, or dotted). To set the style of a line, you use element_line(). For example, to make the axis lines into red, dashed lines, you would use the following.

p + theme(axis.line = element_line(color = "red", linetype = "dashed"))

Similarly, element_rect() changes rectangles and element_text() changes text. You can remove a plot element using element_blank().

plt_prop_unemployed_over_time is available.

Instructions 1/4

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  • Give all rectangles in the plot, (the rect element) a fill color of "grey92" (very pale grey).
  • Remove the legend.key's outline by setting its color to be missing.
  • Look at the changes in the plot.