Objectives

• Understand the grammar of ggplot
• Apply aesthetic changes to a plot
• Visualize a distribution
• Visualize a relationship between variables

Questions

• How can I plot my data?
• What type of plot should I use for my data?

Today we’re going to learn how to plot in R using ggplot2. This is a package designed to streamline the production of complicated and aesthetically pleasing plots. You can also make plots in R without ggplot2, but its easier to learn ggplot2 and almost any plot can be constructed with it. Open Rstudio and install packages. For the lab computers, everything is reset when you log out, so you need to install packages again.

#This has example data for plotting
install.packages("palmerpenguins")
#This has different themes for designing your plots
install.packages("ggthemes")
#This has the main packages for plotting and data transformation
install.packages("tidyverse")

Now we load packages.

library("tidyverse")
library("palmerpenguins")
library("ggthemes")

Now we’re going to work through Chapter 1 of R for Data Science.

If you finish Chapter 1 early, Chapter 9 extends into more complicated plots.