Chapter 3
Getting Graphic
IN THIS CHAPTER
R Base graphics
Kicking it up a notch with ggplot2
From its very beginnings, R has been about data visualization as much as data analysis. That’s because a good graph enables an analyst to spot trends and make predictions. Graphics also help you present your ideas to others. And as you’ll see, graphics are the lifeblood of the projects in this book.
The R community has developed a considerable number of graphics packages. In this chapter, I introduce you to the two most widely used ones: the base graphics package that comes with your R installation and ggplot2, which is part of the tidyverse package I discuss in Chapter 2. As we get into the projects, I use other packages as necessary.
Touching Base
Base R enables you to develop a wide variety of graphs. Its general format for creating (most) graphics is
graphics_function(data, argument1, argument2, …)
That's pretty much it!
After you create a graph in RStudio, click the Zoom icon on the RStudio Plots tab to open the graph in a larger window. The graph is clearer in the Zoom window than it is on the Plots tab.
Histograms
One way of finding trends in data is to examine the frequencies ...
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