Data visualization in R: base R and ggplot2

Data + Code for "Basic data visualization in R" and "Advancing with data visualization in R using ggplot2" at the Data+Narrative storytelling workshops at Boston University on Thursday, June 7th 2018.

Note the "Advancing with data visualization in R using ggplot2" workshop is ~90% the same as a workshop on the same topic I gave at BU last year.

Equivalent materials for "Tricks for cleaning your data in R" available, from 2017, are here.

Links to install R and RStudio

• R: website for the R software
• RStudio: website for RStudio, a powerful graphical user interface for R

Files included

Annotated code and step-by step instructions for the workshop

• R-basic-dataviz.md: Markdown file (for viewing on the web)

• R-basic-dataviz.pdf: PDF file (for printing out)

• R-advancing-with-dataviz.md: Markdown file (for viewing on the web)

• R-advancing-with-dataviz.pdf: PDF file (for printing out)

R code

The R code for each class, which can be run in RStudio:

• R-basic-dataviz.R

• R-advancing-with-dataviz.R

Underlying data needed to run the R code

• boston_weather.csv: data on weather in Boston on June 7th (the day of this workshop) from 2007 to 2017, from Weather Underground. See processing-weather-data.R for more details.

• life.csv: data on life expectancy for each country from 2000 to 2015, from the World Health Organization

How to follow this workshop

• You can clone or download this repository by clicking on the green button above, "Clone or download"
• Open the .R file in RStudio
• Follow along by reading the .md file online or printing the .pdf file out by clicking the Github links above

Additional resources

• Visual Vocabulary by the Financial Times
• The Data Visualisation Catalogue by Severino Ribecca
• On Graphonyms: the Importance of Chart Type Names by Maarten Lambrechts
• “A Simple Introduction to the Graphing Philosophy of ggplot2” by Tom Hopper
• ggplot2 Cheat Sheet by RStudio
• ggplot2 Documentation by Hadley Wickham & Winston Chang
• Resources for Doing Data Journalism by Timo Grossenbacher
• Shapes and Line Types in R by Winston Chang

Questions / Feedback?

ychristinezhang at gmail dot com

or on Twitter

@christinezhang

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.