There are several excellent graphics packages provided for R. The
ggformula
package currently builds on one of them,
ggplot2
, but provides a very different user interface for
creating plots. The interface is based on formulas (much like the
lattice
interface) and the use of the chaining operator
(|>
) to build more complex graphics from simpler
components.
The ggformula
graphics were designed with several user
groups in mind:
beginners who want to get started quickly and may find the syntax
of ggplot2()
a bit offputting,
those familiar with lattice
graphics, but wanting to
be able to easily create multilayered plots,
those who prefer a formula interface, perhaps because it is
familiar from use with functions like lm()
or from use of
the mosaic
package for numerical summaries.
The basic template for creating a plot with ggformula
is
or, equivalently,
where
plottype
describes the type of plot (layer) desired
(points, lines, a histogram, etc., etc.),
mydata
is a data frame containing the variables used
in the plot, and
formula
describes how/where those variables are
used.
For example, in a bivariate plot, formula
will take the
form y ~ x
, where y
is the name of a variable
to be plotted on the y-axis and x
is the name of a variable
to be plotted on the x-axis. (It is also possible to use expressions
that can be evaluated using variables in the data frame as well.)
The first form of the tempate is useful for simple plots or for multi-layered plots where different layers use different data. The second form is useful for multi-layered plots or plots with many arguments.
Here is a simple example:
The “kind of graphic” is specified by the name of the graphics
function. All of the ggformula
data graphics functions have
names starting with gf_
, which is intended to remind the
user that they are formula-based interfaces to ggplot2
:
g
for ggplot2
and f
for
“formula.” Commonly used functions include
gf_point()
for scatter plotsgf_line()
for line plots (connecting dots in a scatter
plot)gf_density()
or gf_dens()
or
gf_histogram()
or gf_dhistogram()
or
gf_freqpoly()
to display distributions of a quantitative
variablegf_boxplot()
or gf_violin()
for comparing
distributions side-by-sidegf_counts()
for bar-graph style depictions of
counts.gf_bar()
for more general bar-graph style graphicsThe function names generally match a corresponding function name from
ggplot2
, although
gf_counts()
is a simplified special case of
geom_bar()
,gf_dens()
is an alternative to
gf_density()
that displays the density plot slightly
differentlygf_dhistogram()
produces a density histogram rather
than a count histogram.Each of the gf_
functions can create the coordinate axes
and fill it in one operation. (In ggplot2
nomenclature,
gf_
functions create a frame and add a layer, all in one
operation.) This is what happens for the first gf_
function
in a chain. For subsequent gf_
functions, new layers are
added, each one “on top of” the previous layers.
Each of the marks in the plot is a glyph. Every glyph has
graphical attributes (called aesthetics in
ggplot2
) that tell where and how to draw the glyph. In the
above plot, the obvious attributes are x- and y-position:
We’ve told R to put mpg
along the y-axis and
hp
along the x-asis, as is clear from the plot.
But each point also has other attributes, including color, shape,
size, stroke, fill, and alpha (transparency). We didn’t specify those in
our example, so gf_point()
uses some default values for
those – in this case smallish black filled-in circles.
In the gf_
functions, you specify the non-position
graphical attributes using additional arguments to the function.
Attributes can be set to a constant value (e.g, set the
color to “blue”; set the size to 2) or they can be
mapped to a variable in the data or some expression
involving the variables (e.g., map the color to sex
, so sex
determines the color groupings)
Attributes are set or mapped using additional arguments.
attribute = value
sets attribute
to value
.attribute = ~ expression
maps attribute
to
expression
where attribute
is one of color
,
shape
, etc., value
is a constant
(e.g. "red"
or 0.5
, as appropriate), and
expression
may be some more general expression that can be
computed using the variables in data
(although often is is
better to create a new variable in the data and to use that variable
instead of an on-the-fly calculation within the plot).
The following plot, for instance,
We use cyl
to determine the color and
carb
to determine the size of each dot. Color and size are
mapped to cyl
and carb
. A
legend is provided to show us how the mapping is being done. (Later, we
can use scales to control precisely how the mapping is done – which
colors and sizes are used to represent which values of cyl
and carb
.)
We also set the transparency to 50%. The gives
the same value of alpha
to all glyphs in this
layer.
ggformula
allows for on-the-fly calculations of
attributes, although the default labeling of the plot is often better if
we create a new variable in our data frame. In the examples below, since
there are only three values for carb
, it is easier to read
the graph if we tell R to treat cyl
as a categorical
variable by converting to a factor (or to a string). Except for the
labeling of the legend, these two plots are the same. In the second
example, we see how the ggformula works well with data tranformations
using |>
.
For some plots, we only have to specify the x-position because the
y-position is calculated from the x-values. Histograms, densityplots,
and frequency polygons are examples. To illustrate, we’ll use density
plots, but the same ideas apply to gf_histogram()
, and
gf_freqpolygon()
as well. Note that in the one-variable
density graphics, the variable whose density is to be calculated goes to
the right of the tilde, in the position reserved for the x-axis
variable.
# gf_dens() is similar, but there is no line at bottom/sides and the plot is not fillable
gf_dens( ~ bill_length_mm, color = ~ species, alpha = 0.7, data = penguins)
# gf_dens2() is like gf_dens() but is fillable
gf_dens2( ~ bill_length_mm, fill = ~ species, data = penguins,
color = "gray50", alpha = 0.4)
Several of the plotting functions include additional arguments that
do not modify attributes of individual glyphs but control some other
aspect of the plot. In this case, adjust
can be used to
increase or decrease the amount of smoothing.
# less smoothing
penguins |> gf_dens( ~ bill_length_mm, color = ~ species, alpha = 0.7, adjust = 0.25)
## Warning: Removed 2 rows containing non-finite outside the scale range
## (`stat_density()`).
## Warning: Removed 2 rows containing non-finite outside the scale range
## (`stat_density()`).
To learn more about ggformula
, see the longer version of
this vignette available at https://www.mosaic-web.org/ggformula/. That version
include sections on
labelled
or expss
packages)