Customizing charts - Journalism Courses Knight Center...Jerry Maguire An Officer and a Gentleman What's Eating Gilbert Grape Far and Away The Money Pit Edward Scissorhands Splash Top

Customizing chartsAndrew Ba Tran

ContentsReordering chart labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Lollipop plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Saving ggplots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Scales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Scales for color and fill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Annotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Your turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

This is from the fourth chapter of learn.r-journalism.com.

Let’s bring that data back in again.library(readr)

ages

AmeliaAmerican Ganster

An Officer and a GentlemanApollo 13Arbitrage

Autumn in New YorkBatman & Robin

Bee SeasonBlade Runner

BlowCaptain Phillips

Cast AwayCharlie Wilson's War

ChocolatCloud Atlas

Dark ShadowsDejaVu

Edward ScissorhandsEmpire Strikes Back

Extremely Loud & Incredibly CloseFar and Away

FirewallFirst Knight

FlightForrest GumpHe Got Game

Intolerable CrueltyJerry Maguire

John QKnight and Day

LeatherheadsLosin It

Malcolm XMission Impossible III

Mo' Better BluesNights in Rodanthe

O Brother, Where Art Thou?Oblivion

Ocean's ElevenOne Fine Day

Out of SightOut of Time

Pirates of the CaribbeanPretty Woman

Raiders of the Lost ArkRandom Hearts

Regarding HenryRemember the Titans

Risky BusinessRock of Ages

SabrinaShall We Dance

Six Days Seven NightsSleepless in Seattle

Sleepy HollowSolaris

SommersbySplash

The AmericanThe Good German

The HoaxThe Money Pit

The Preacher's WifeThe Rum Diary

The TouristTop Gun

Training DayTranscendence

Up in the AirVanilla Sky

What Lies BeneathWhat's Eating Gilbert Grape

WitnessWorking Girl

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actress_age

Mov

ie

It’s not that great, right? It’s in reverse alphabetical order.

Let’s reorder it based on age.

Reordering chart labels

This means we need to transform the data.

The easiest way to do this is with the package forcats, which (surprise!) is also part of the tidyverse universe.

The function is fct_reorder() and it works like this

2

https://forcats.tidyverse.org/index.html

# If you don't have forcats installed yet, uncomment the line below and run# install.packages("forcats")

library(forcats)ggplot(ages,

aes(x=actress_age, y=fct_reorder(Movie, actress_age, desc=TRUE))) +geom_point()

3

Edward ScissorhandsSleepy Hollow

What's Eating Gilbert GrapePirates of the Caribbean

Blade RunnerHe Got GamePretty Woman

Empire Strikes BackRisky Business

SplashDark ShadowsFar and Away

The Rum DiaryBlow

An Officer and a GentlemanTraining Day

Vanilla SkyWitness

Autumn in New YorkForrest GumpJerry Maguire

Mo' Better BluesOut of Sight

Top GunAmerican Ganster

Raiders of the Lost ArkRemember the Titans

Six Days Seven NightsDejaVu

First KnightMission Impossible III

SabrinaSommersby

TranscendenceSleepless in Seattle

Working GirlOut of Time

SolarisBatman & Robin

Losin ItOblivion

Regarding HenryThe Preacher's Wife

ArbitrageIntolerable Cruelty

John QMalcolm X

Ocean's ElevenRock of Ages

The AmericanAmelia

FlightThe Tourist

ChocolatThe Hoax

The Money PitUp in the Air

Cast AwayKnight and Day

The Good GermanLeatherheadsOne Fine Day

Random HeartsApollo 13

Bee SeasonCharlie Wilson's War

O Brother, Where Art Thou?What Lies BeneathNights in Rodanthe

FirewallCloud Atlas

Extremely Loud & Incredibly CloseCaptain PhillipsShall We Dance

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actress_age

fct_

reor

der(

Mov

ie, a

ctre

ss_a

ge, d

esc

= T

RU

E)

Not a bad looking chart. We can tweak it a little more and turn it into

Lollipop plot

This time we’re going to use a new geom_: geom_segment()ggplot(ages,

aes(x=actress_age, y=fct_reorder(Movie, actress_age, desc=TRUE))) +geom_segment(

aes(x = 0,xend = actress_age,yend = fct_reorder(Movie, actress_age, desc=TRUE)),color = "gray50") +geom_point()

4






The Rum DiaryBlow


Vanilla SkyWitness







SabrinaSommersby




Losin ItOblivion



John QMalcolm X


The AmericanAmelia

FlightThe Tourist

ChocolatThe Hoax







FirewallCloud Atlas


0 20 40 60

actress_age

fct_

reor

der(

Mov

ie, a

ctre

ss_a

ge, d

esc

= T

RU

E)

Looking interesting, right?

If we wanted to publish this on a website or share on social media, we’ll need to clean up the labels and adda title and add a source line.

That’s easy to do.ggplot(ages,

aes(x=actress_age, y=fct_reorder(Movie, actress_age, desc=TRUE))) +geom_segment(

aes(x = 0,y=fct_reorder(Movie, actress_age, desc=TRUE),xend = actress_age,yend = fct_reorder(Movie, actress_age, desc=TRUE)),color = "gray50") +geom_point() +

5

# NEW CODE BELOWlabs(x="Actress age", y="Movie",

title = "Actress ages in movies",subtitle = "for R for Journalists class",caption = "Data from Vulture.com and IMDB") +

theme_minimal()






The Rum DiaryBlow


Vanilla SkyWitness







SabrinaSommersby




Losin ItOblivion



John QMalcolm X


The AmericanAmelia

FlightThe Tourist

ChocolatThe Hoax







FirewallCloud Atlas


0 20 40 60

Actress age

Mov

ie

for R for Journalists class

Actress ages in movies

Data from Vulture.com and IMDB

So we added a lot of information to the labs() function: x, y, title, subtitle, and caption.

We also added theme_minimal() which changed a lot of the style, such as the gray grid background.

What if we wanted to clean it up even more?

It’s such a tall chart, it’s difficult to keep track of the actual age represented by the lollipop.

Let’s get rid of the grids and add the numbers to the right of each dot.

6

ggplot(ages,aes(x=actress_age, y=fct_reorder(Movie, actress_age, desc=TRUE))) +

geom_segment(aes(x = 0,

y=fct_reorder(Movie, actress_age, desc=TRUE),xend = actress_age,yend = fct_reorder(Movie, actress_age, desc=TRUE)),color = "gray50") +geom_point() +

labs(x="Actress age", y="Movie",title = "Actress ages in movies",subtitle = "for R for Journalists class",caption = "Data from Vulture.com and IMDB") +

theme_minimal() +# NEW CODE BELOWgeom_text(aes(label=actress_age), hjust=-.5) +theme(panel.border = element_blank(),

panel.grid.major = element_blank(),panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),axis.line = element_blank(),axis.text.x = element_blank())

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The Rum DiaryBlow


Vanilla SkyWitness







SabrinaSommersby




Losin ItOblivion



John QMalcolm X


The AmericanAmelia

FlightThe Tourist

ChocolatThe Hoax







FirewallCloud Atlas


Actress age

Mov

ie


Actress ages in movies


So, we added two new ggplot2 elements: geom_text() and theme().

We passed the actress_age variable to label and also used hjust= which means horizontally adjust thelocation. Alternatively, vjust would adjust vertically.

In theme() there are a bunch of things passed, including panel.border and axis.text.x and made them equalelement_blank().

Each piece of the chart can be customized and eliminated with *element_blank().

Not bad looking!

Let’s save it.

8

Saving ggplots

We’ll use ggsave() from the ggplot2 package.

File types that can be exported:

• png• tex• pdf• jpeg• tiff• bmp• svg

You can specify the width of the image in units of “in”, “cm”, “or mm”.

Otherwise it saves based on the size of how it displayed on your screen.ggsave("actress_ages.png")

## Saving 6.5 x 4.5 in image

How’s it look?

Ew, okay. Needs some adjustment. I guess we can’t go with the default display for this particular chart.ggsave("actress_ages_adjusted.png", width=20, height=30, units="cm")

9

Much better!

You could then save it as a .svg file and tweak it even further in Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape.

Alright, I’m going to tweak it some more by adding actor ages. We just need to adjust the geom_segment()and another geom_point() layer so it uses the actor_age variable.# First, let's permanently reorder the data frame so we don't have to keep using fct_reorder

library(dplyr)

ages_reordered %mutate(Movie=fct_reorder(Movie, desc(actor_age)))

ggplot(ages_reordered) +geom_segment(

aes(x = actress_age,y = Movie,xend = actor_age,yend = Movie),color = "gray50") +

geom_point(aes(x=actress_age, y=Movie), color="dark green") +geom_point(aes(x=actor_age, y=Movie), color="dark blue") +labs(x="", y="",

title = "Actor and actress ages in movies",subtitle = "for R for Journalists class",caption = "Data from Vulture.com and IMDB") +

theme_minimal() +geom_text(aes(x=actress_age, y=Movie, label=actress_age),

hjust=ifelse(ages$actress_age

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ArbitrageFirewallAmelia

Nights in RodantheWhat Lies Beneath

Captain PhillipsFlight

Random HeartsThe Hoax

Bee SeasonCloud Atlas

Extremely Loud & Incredibly CloseShall We Dance

Six Days Seven NightsSabrina

American GansterCharlie Wilson's War

DejaVuAutumn in New York

OblivionRock of Ages

The AmericanTranscendenceDark Shadows

Out of TimeRegarding Henry

The Rum DiaryUp in the Air

John QKnight and Day

The TouristLeatherheads

Training DayWorking GirlFirst Knight

Remember the TitansThe Good German

Cast AwayHe Got Game

Mission Impossible IIIPirates of the Caribbean

SommersbyIntolerable Cruelty

WitnessSolaris

The Preacher's WifeOcean's Eleven

Pretty WomanBlade Runner

O Brother, Where Art Thou?Vanilla Sky

Apollo 13Raiders of the Lost Ark

BlowChocolat

Empire Strikes BackForrest Gump

Malcolm XOut of Sight

Batman & RobinSleepless in Seattle

Sleepy HollowMo' Better Blues

One Fine DayJerry Maguire

An Officer and a GentlemanWhat's Eating Gilbert Grape

Far and AwayThe Money Pit

Edward ScissorhandsSplash

Top GunRisky Business

Losin It


Actor and actress ages in movies


This time I left the x and y axis labels blank because it seemed redundant.

Scales

Let’s talk about scales.

Axes

12

• scale_x_continuous()• scale_y_continuous()• scale_x_discrete()• scale_y_discrete()

Colors

• scale_color_continuous()• scale_color_manual()• scale_color_brewer()

Fill

• scale_fill_continuous()• scale_fill_manual()

ggplot(ages, aes(x=actor_age, y=actress_age)) + geom_point() +scale_x_continuous(breaks=seq(20,30,2), limits=c(20,30)) +scale_y_continuous(breaks=seq(20,40,4), limits=c(20,40))

## Warning: Removed 67 rows containing missing values (geom_point).

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actor_age

actr

ess_

age

By setting breaks in scale_x_continuous(), we limited the breaks where the chart was divided on the xaxis in intervals of 2. And we limited the x axis with limit between 20 and 30. All other data points weredropped.

By setting breaks in scale_y_continuous(), we limited the breaks where the chart was divided on the xaxis in intervals of 4. And we limited the x axis with limit between 20 and 40. All other data points weredropped.

That was limiting the scale by continuous data.

13

Here’s how to set limits on discrete data.ggplot(ages, aes(x=actor)) + geom_bar() +

scale_x_discrete(limits=c("Tom Hanks", "Tom Cruise", "Denzel Washington"))

## Warning: Removed 43 rows containing non-finite values (stat_count).

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Tom Hanks Tom Cruise Denzel Washington

actor

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Scales for color and fill

It’s possible to manually change the colors of your chart.

You can use hex symbols or the name of a color if it’s recognized.

We’ll use scale_fill_manual().library(dplyr)

avg_age %group_by(actor) %>%mutate(age_diff = actor_age-actress_age) %>%summarize(average_age_diff = mean(age_diff))

ggplot(avg_age, aes(x=actor, y=average_age_diff, fill=actor)) +geom_bar(stat="identity") +theme(legend.position="none") + # This removes the legendscale_fill_manual(values=c("aquamarine", "darkorchid", "deepskyblue2", "lemonchiffon2",

"orange", "peachpuff3", "tomato"))

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http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~tzheng/files/Rcolor.pdf

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Denzel Washington George Clooney Harrison Ford Johnny Depp Richard Gere Tom Cruise Tom Hanks

actor

aver

age_

age_

diff

You can also specify a color palette using scale_fill_brewer() or scale_color_brewer()ggplot(avg_age, aes(x=actor, y=average_age_diff, fill=actor)) +

geom_bar(stat="identity") +theme(legend.position="none") +scale_fill_brewer()

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actor

aver

age_

age_

diff

Check out some of the other palette options that can be passed to brewer.ggplot(avg_age, aes(x=actor, y=average_age_diff, fill=actor)) +

geom_bar(stat="identity") +theme(legend.position="none") +

15

https://learnr.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/ggplot2-qualitative-colour-palettes/

scale_fill_brewer(palette="Pastel1")

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aver

age_

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diff

Did you know that someone made a Wes Anderson color palette package based on his different movies?

Annotations

You can annotate charts with annotate() and geom_hline() or geom_vline().ggplot(ages, aes(x=actor_age, y=actress_age)) +

geom_point() +geom_hline(yintercept=50, color="red") +annotate("text", x=40, y=51, label="Random text for some reason", color="red")

16

https://github.com/karthik/wesanderson

Random text for some reason

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actor_age

actr

ess_

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Themes

You’ve seen an example of a theme used in a previous chart. theme_bw().

But there are many more that have been created and collected into the ggthemes library.

Here’s one for the economist# If you don't have ggthemes installed yet, uncomment the line below and run it#install.packages("ggthemes")

library(ggthemes)ggplot(ages, aes(x=actor_age, y=actress_age, color=actor)) +

geom_point() +theme_economist() +scale_colour_economist()

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ess_

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actorDenzel WashingtonGeorge Clooney

Harrison FordJohnny Depp

Richard GereTom Cruise

Tom Hanks

Here’s one based on FiveThirtyEight’s style (though it’s not the official one).ggplot(ages, aes(x=actor_age, y=actress_age, color=actor)) +

geom_point() +theme_fivethirtyeight()

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actorDenzel Washington

George Clooney

Harrison Ford

Johnny Depp

Richard Gere

Tom Cruise

Tom Hanks

Check out all the other ones currently available.

It’s not difficult to make your own. It’s just time consuming.

It involves tweaking every little detail, like text, and colors, and how the grids should look.

Check out the theme that the Associated Press uses. They posted it on their repo and by loading their ownpackage, they can just add theme_ap() at the end of their charts to transform it to AP style.

Your turn

Challenge yourself with these exercises so you’ll retain the knowledge of this section.

Instructions on how to run the exercise app are on the intro page to this section.

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https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ggthemes/vignettes/ggthemes.htmlhttps://github.com/associatedpress/aptheme/blob/master/R/theme_ap.Rhttps://github.com/associatedpress/apthemehttp://code.r-journalism.com/chapter-4/#section-customizing-chartshttps://learn.r-journalism.com/en/visualizing/

Reordering chart labelsLollipop plotSaving ggplotsScalesScales for color and fillAnnotationsThemesYour turn

Documents

Customizing charts - Journalism Courses Knight Center...Jerry Maguire An Officer and a Gentleman What's Eating Gilbert Grape Far and Away The Money Pit Edward Scissorhands Splash Top