Graphics for

Communication
 Introduction
• In previous sections, we have learned about Exploratory Data Analysis and
Data Visualization
• Now that you understand your data, you need to communicate your
understanding to others.
• When you make exploratory plots, you have to know which variables the plot
will display.
• Graphics for communication include
 Label
 Annotations
 Scales
 Zooming
 Themes
 Saving your plots
 Label
Label
• The easiest place to start when turning an exploratory data analysis into an
expository graphic is with good labels.
• You add labels with the labs() function.
Example: adds a plot title
ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = class)) +
geom_smooth(se = FALSE) +
labs(title = paste("Fuel efficiency generally decreases with engine size"))
• The purpose of a plot title is to summarize the main finding.
• Avoid titles that just describe what the plot is, e.g., “A scatterplot of engine
displacement vs. fuel economy.”
• If you need to add more text, there are two other useful labels that you can use
in ggplot2
subtitle adds additional detail in a smaller font beneath the title.
caption adds text at the bottom right of the plot, often used to describe the
source of the data:
Example: ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) + geom_point(aes(color = class)) +
geom_smooth(se = FALSE) +
labs(title = paste("Fuel efficiency generally decreases with engine
size“),
subtitle = paste("Two seaters (sports cars) are an exception because
of their light weight"),
caption = "Data from fueleconomy.gov")
• You can also use labs() to replace the axis and legend titles. It’s usually a
good idea to replace short variable names with more detailed descriptions.
ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) + geom_point(aes(color = class)) +
geom_smooth(se = FALSE) +
labs(title = “ “, x = "Engine displacement (L)", y = "Highway fuel
economy(mpg)",
colour = "Car type")
• It’s possible to use mathematical equations instead of text strings.
• Just switch "" out for quote() and read about the available options in ?plotmath:
Example: df <- tibble(
x = runif(10),
y = runif(10)
)
ggplot(df, aes(x, y)) +
geom_point() +
labs(
x = quote(sum(x[i] ^ 2, i == 1, n)),
y = quote(alpha + beta + frac(delta, theta))
)
 Annotations
Annotations
• In addition to labeling major components of your plot, it’s often useful to
label individual observations or groups of observations.
• The first tool you have is geom_text().
• geom_text() is similar to geom_point(), but it has an additional aesthetic:
label.
• This makes it possible to add textual labels to your plots.
• There are two possible sources of labels.
• First, you might have a tibble that provides labels.
best_in_class <- mpg %>%
group_by(class) %>%
filter(row_number(desc(hwy)) == 1)

ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +

geom_point(aes(color = class)) +
geom_text(aes(label = model),
data = best_in_class)
• This is hard to read because the labels overlap with each other, and with the
points.
• We can make things a little better by switching to geom_label(), which draws a
rectangle behind the text.
• We also use the nudge_y parameter to move the labels slightly above the
corresponding points.
Example: ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = class)) +
geom_label( aes(label = model),
data = best_in_class,
nudge_y = 2,
alpha = 0.5)
• But if you look closely in the top lefthand corner, you’ll notice that there are
two labels practically on top of each other.
• Instead, we can fix these by using ggrepel package by Kamil Slowikowski.
This package will automatically adjust labels so that they don’t overlap.
Example: ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = class)) +
geom_point(size = 3, shape = 1, data = best_in_class) +
ggrepel::geom_label_repel(aes(label = model),
data = best_in_class)
• If you want to add a single label to the plot, but you want the label in the
corner of the plot, so it’s convenient to create a new data frame using
summarize() to compute the maximum values of x and y.
Example: label <- mpg %>%
summarize(
displ = max(displ),
hwy = max(hwy),
label = paste( "Increasing engine size is \nrelated to"
"decreasing fuel economy."))
ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point() +
geom_text(
aes(label = label),
data = label,
vjust = "top",
hjust = "right")

• If you want to place the text exactly on the borders of the plot, you can use +Inf and -Inf.
Example: label <- mpg %>%
summarize(
displ = Inf,
hwy = Inf,
label = paste("Increasing engine size is \nrelated to"
"decreasing fuel economy."))
ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point() +
geom_text(
aes(label = label),
data = label,
vjust = "top",
hjust = "right")
• Another approach is to use stringr::str_wrap() to automatically add line breaks, given the
number of characters you want per line:
"Increasing engine size related to decreasing fuel economy." %>%
stringr::str_wrap(width = 40) %>%
writeLines()

• In addition to geom_text(), you have many other geoms in ggplot2 available to help
annotate your plot. A few ideas:
 Scales
Scales
• The third way you can make your plot better for communication is to adjust
the scales.
• Scales control the mapping from data values to things that you can perceive.
ggplot2 automatically adds scales.
Example: ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = class))
• ggplot2 automatically adds default scales behind the scenes:
ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = class)) +
scale_x_continuous() +
scale_y_continuous() +
scale_color_discrete()
• The naming scheme for scales: scale_ followed by the name of the aesthetic,
then _, then the name of the scale.
• The default scales are named according to the type of variable they align
with: continuous, discrete, datetime, or date.
Axis Ticks and Legend Keys
• There are two primary arguments that affect the appearance of the ticks on the axes
and the keys on the legend:
Breaks - controls the position of the ticks, or the values associated with the
keys. and
Labels – controls the text label associated with each tick/key.
• The most common use of breaks is to override the default choice:
ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) + geom_point() +
scale_y_continuous(breaks = seq(15, 40, by = 5))
• You can use labels in the same way, but you can also set it to NULL to
suppress the labels altogether.
ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point() +
scale_x_continuous(labels = NULL) +
scale_y_continuous(labels = NULL)
• You can also use breaks and labels to control the appearance of legends.
• Collectively axes and legends are called guides. Axes are used for the x and
y aesthetics; legends are used for everything else.
• Another use of breaks is when you have relatively few data points and want
to highlight exactly where the observations occur.
Legend Layout
• To control the overall position of the legend, you need to use a theme()
setting.
• The theme setting legend.position controls where the legend is drawn:
base <- ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = class))
base + theme(legend.position = "left")
base + theme(legend.position = "top")
base + theme(legend.position = "bottom")
base + theme(legend.position = "right") # the default
• You can also use legend.position = "none" to suppress the display of the
legend altogether.
• To control the display of individual legends, use guides() along with
guide_legend() or guide_colorbar().
• controlling the number of rows the legend uses with nrow, and overriding
one of the aesthetics to make the points bigger.
• This is particularly useful if you have used a low alpha to display many
points on a plot. "se=FALSE", where "s.e." stands for "standard error."
ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = class)) +
geom_smooth(se = FALSE) +
theme(legend.position = "bottom") +
guides(color = guide_legend(
nrow = 1,
override.aes = list(size = 4)))
Replacing a Scale
• There are two types of scales that you want to switch out:
continuous position scales and
color scales.
• The same principles apply to all the other aesthetics, so once you’ve
mastered position and color, you’ll be able to quickly pick up other scale
replacements.
• It is very useful to plot transformations of your variable
ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat, price)) +
geom_bin2d()
ggplot(diamonds, aes(log10(carat), log10(price))) +
geom_bin2d()
• The disadvantage of this transformation is that the axes are now labeled with
the transformed values, making it hard to interpret the plot.
• Instead of doing the transformation in the aesthetic mapping, we can do it
with the scale.
• This is visually identical, except the axes are labeled on the original data
scale
Example: ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat, price)) +
geom_bin2d() +
scale_x_log10() +
scale_y_log10()
• Another/ alternative useful scale are the ColorBrewer scales that is
frequently customized is color. .
• There is enough difference in the shades of red and green that the dots on the
right can be distinguished even by people with red-green color blindness
Example: ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = drv))
ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = drv)) +
scale_color_brewer(palette = "Set1")
• If there are just a few colors, you can add a redundant shape mapping.
ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = drv, shape = drv)) +
scale_color_brewer(palette = "Set1")
• When you have a predefined mapping between values and colors, use
scale_color_manual().
presidential %>%
mutate(id = 33 + row_number()) %>%
ggplot(aes(start, id, color = party)) +
geom_point() +
geom_segment(aes(xend = end, yend = id)) +
scale_colour_manual(
values = c(Republican = "red",
Democratic = "blue"))
• For continuous color, you can use the built-in scale_color_gradient() or
scale_fill_gradient().
• Another option is scale_color_viridis() provided by the viridis package.
• It’s a continuous analog of the categorical ColorBrewer scales.
df <- tibble( x = rnorm(10000),
y = rnorm(10000)
)
ggplot(df, aes(x, y)) + geom_hex() +
coord_fixed()
#> Loading required package: methods
ggplot(df, aes(x, y)) + geom_hex() +
viridis::scale_fill_viridis() +
coord_fixed()
• all color scales come in two varieties: scale_color_x() and scale_fill_x() for the
color and fill aesthetics.
 Zooming
Zooming
• There are three ways to control the plot limits:
Adjusting what data is plotted
Setting the limits in each scale
Setting xlim and ylim in coord_cartesian()
• To zoom in on a region of the plot, the best to use is coord_cartesian().
ggplot(mpg, mapping = aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = class)) +
geom_smooth() +
coord_cartesian(xlim = c(5, 7), ylim = c(10, 30))
mpg %>%
filter(displ >= 5, displ <= 7, hwy >= 10, hwy <= 30) %>%
ggplot(aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = class)) +
geom_smooth()
• You can also set the limits on individual scales.
• Reducing the limits is basically equivalent to subsetting the data.
• If we extract two classes of cars and plot them separately, it’s difficult to
compare the plots because all three scales (the x-axis, the y-axis, and the
color aesthetic) have different ranges.
 suv <- mpg %>% filter(class == "suv")
compact <- mpg %>% filter(class == "compact")
ggplot(suv, aes(displ, hwy, color = drv)) +
geom_point()
ggplot(compact, aes(displ, hwy, color = drv)) +
geom_point()
• One way to overcome this problem is to share scales across multiple plots,
training the scales with the limits of the full data:
x_scale <- scale_x_continuous(limits = range(mpg$displ))
y_scale <- scale_y_continuous(limits = range(mpg$hwy))
col_scale <- scale_color_discrete(limits = unique(mpg$drv))
ggplot(suv, aes(displ, hwy, color = drv)) +
geom_point() +
x_scale +
y_scale +
col_scale
ggplot(compact, aes(displ, hwy, color = drv)) +
geom_point() +
x_scale +
y_scale +
col_scale
 Themes
• you can customize the non-data elements of your plot with a theme:
ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
geom_point(aes(color = class)) +
geom_smooth(se = FALSE) +
theme_bw()

• ggplot2 includes eight themes by default, many more are included in add-on
packages like ggthemes, by Jeffrey Arnold.

• The default theme has a gray background, because it puts the data forward
while still making the grid lines visible.
• The white grid lines are, but they have little visual impact and we can easily
tune them out.

• The gray background gives the plot a similar typographic color to the text,
ensuring that the graphics fit in with the flow of a document without jumping
out with a bright white background.

• Finally, the gray background creates a continuous field of color, which

ensures that the plot is perceived as a single visual entity.
Saving Your Plots
• There are two main ways to get your plots out of R and into your final write-
up:
1. ggsave() and
2. knitr. ggsave()
will save the most recent plot to disk
• If you don’t specify the width
and height they will be taken
From the dimensions of the
current plotting device.