Get startedGet started for free

Working with geom_col

In ggplot, there are two different ways to make bar plots: geom_col() and geom_bar().

If your data is in the form where the height of the bar is encoded in a column that you want to map to the y-axis, like counts of diseases are in our data, you want to use the geom_col() option.

Let's make a barplot of the number of cases recorded by disease for India in 1980 using geom_col().

This exercise is part of the course

Visualization Best Practices in R

View Course

Exercise instructions

  • filter() the data to the country of India and the year 1980 with country == "India", year == 1980.
  • Map disease to the x-axis and cases to the y-axis in the aes() call.
  • Add a geom_col() geometry.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

who_disease %>% 
	# filter to india in 1980
	filter(___) %>% 
	# map x aesthetic to disease and y to cases
	ggplot(aes(___)) +
	# use geom_col to draw
	___
Edit and Run Code