R All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 1

Getting Graphic

IN THIS CHAPTER

Letting patterns lead you right

Exploring base R graphics

Graduating to ggplot2

Wrapping things up

Data visualization is an important part of statistics. A good graph enables you to spot trends and relationships you might otherwise miss if you look only at numbers. Graphics are valuable for another reason: They help you present your ideas to groups.

This concept is especially important in the field of data science. Organizations rely on data scientists to make sense of huge amounts of data so that decision-makers can formulate strategy. Graphics enable data scientists to explain patterns in the data to managers and to nontechnical personnel.

Finding Patterns

Data often resides in long, complex tables. Often, you have to visualize only a portion of the table to find a pattern or a trend. A number of good examples reside in the MASS package, so download this package into your R library by selecting the check box next to MASS on the Packages tab. (Chapter 2 of Book 1 tells you how to install a package.)

I work with the Cars93 data frame, ...