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Albert Rapp Profile picture
@rappa753
Aug 11, 2022 • 9 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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Forget regular heat maps. Use bubbles on a grid instead 🔵 🟢 🤯

A short #dataviz thread 🧵 🧵

#rstats #ggplot2

1/8 Image
Regular heat maps have the crucial flaw of not showing how much samples were used. 🤔

That's totally fine when the different sizes are shown (e.g. with colors). It's what I did with my calendar plot a while back (special heat map)


2/8
But look what happens when I use a color gradient for a summary statistic.

Here, I try to show a relationship between sale price of a house and a property's size + location.

This looks right. But it isn't. Some medians were estimated with ridiculously small samples. 😱 💔

3/8 Image
Bubble charts make sample sizes obvious.

So, let use bubbles. They have the power to reveal that some medians were based on really small samples.

Crisis averted! 😤 But we can make this even more explicit 👌

4/8 Image
Since we use circles instead of rectangles, we have a bit of room to spare.

We can use that room to double-code the information with text labels. This will make the sample sizes REALLY obvious.

We could even add labels for the medians (if it's not too much clutter for you)

5/8 ImageImage
Want to know how to create these visuals with ggplot?

My new blog post tells you how. But I will give you the main actors right here in this thread.

albert-rapp.de/posts/ggplot2-…

6/8
Bubbles ▶️ geom_point()
Correct bubble size ▶️ scale_size_area()
Pretty labels ▶️ custom string manipulation
Customization of colorbar ▶️ guides()

Heat maps ▶️ geom_tile()
Labels right next to tiles ▶️ coord_cartesian(expand = F)

7/8 ImageImage
Did you enjoy this thread? I hope you did. For more content like this follow @rappa753

Also, please do me a favor and like or retweet the first tweet below. This would help me generate a little bit more engagement for my content 😊

8/8
Want to see even more content like this? Check out my biweekly newsletter.

Every other week I talk about
📈 dataviz,
🌐 Shiny
🧮 statistics.

And it's completely free! alberts-newsletter.beehiiv.com/subscribe

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More from @rappa753

Albert Rapp Profile picture
Sep 9, 2023
Three steps to use color in your title instead of wasting space on a huge legend. Image
1 // Wrap your subtitle into <span> tags

These span-tags are HTML notation for inline text. So in principle, adding them should change nothing.

But as you can see, it does have an impact.
Image
Image
2 // Enable HTML notation

The problem is that ggplot does not know that you want to use HTML notation.

So, enable that with element_markdown() from the {ggtext} package in theme.

This will render the span-tags instead of displaying them as text:
Image
Image
Read 7 tweets
Albert Rapp Profile picture
Aug 26, 2023
Paired bar charts suck at comparing values. The only reason they're used all the time is because they are easy to create.

But there are better alternatives that are just as easy.

Here's how to create 4 better alternatives with #rstats. Image
0 // Where's the code?

The code for all plots can be found at

This thread walks you through the code quickly.albert-rapp.de/posts/ggplot2-…
1 // Dot plot

Instead of using bars next to each other, why not points on the same line?

Makes comparison suuper easy.

And it takes only a geom_point() layer. Dead-simple, right?

I think it's even easier to create than a paired bar chart.
Image
Image
Read 15 tweets
Albert Rapp Profile picture
Aug 19, 2023
R makes it dead-simple to use some of the most effective dataviz principles.

Here are six principles that are so easy that any ggplot beginner’s course should teach them.
1 // Make sure your labels are legible

Too many plots use waaaay too small texts.
With ggplot, it just takes one line to fix this.

Img 1: Way too small fonts & unclear labels
Img 2: Fixed with labs() and theme_gray(base_size = 20)
Img 3: Full code

Image
Image
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2 // Use a minimal theme

As a rule of thumb, you should minimize everything that could potentially distract your audience.

That’s why I usually recommend to use a minimal theme: Just use `theme_minimal()` instead of `theme_gray()`. Image
Read 9 tweets
Albert Rapp Profile picture
Jun 17, 2023
Need to extract days, months, years or more from time data?

Don't compute them all manually with {lubridate}. That's way too tedious.

The {timetk} package has a nice function that does all the heavy lifting for you.

LEFT: {lubridate} workflow
RIGHT: {timetk} workflow
#rstats ImageImage
BONUS: Maybe you don't want use all of the stuff that {timetk} computes for you.

Here's a simple function that extracts only the parts you want.

All of the code can be found on GitHub at gist.github.com/AlbertRapp/2c9… Image
Also, shoutout to @EatsleepfitJeff for teaching me about this function from {timetk} ☺️
Read 4 tweets
Albert Rapp Profile picture
Jun 10, 2023
Everybody loves colors but only few know how to use them well.

With the right guidelines, using colors becomes super easy.

Let me show you how to implement these guidelines with ggplot 🧵
#rstats
Anyone can create a stacked bar chart with ggplot.

But that can end up in a colorful & messy plot.

Let's implement a couple of guidelines from this datawrapper blog post to level up our color game blog.datawrapper.de/10-ways-to-use… Image
The key is to reduce the amount of colors and leverage the `alpha` aesthetic as well. Image
Read 11 tweets
Albert Rapp Profile picture
Jun 7, 2023
Sometimes people ask me if I can do one-on-one R tutoring.

Sure I can. But then my hourly rate applies. And there are many amazing *free* resources. Want to try them first?

Here are a few that I recommend. #rstats
1 // Yet Again: R + Data Science

Find it at yards.albert-rapp.de

I'll start with one of my own bc I assume that you like my style (otherwise why ask me?)

Beware though: YARDS is a graduate-level course that I taught for math students w/ a bit of programming experience. Image
2 // R for Data Science

To me this book is like the R bible. It introduced me to the so-called tidyverse and taught me much of what I know.

This one starts out slow and is really beginner-friendly

r4ds.had.co.nz
Read 11 tweets

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