Data visualization

• The data analysis workflow:

• Visualization helps to understand data

• Data transformation is often required
• Next steps:
– introduce the concept of Grammar of Graphics and learn some plotting templates for ggplot
– learn data transformation functions

1
 The Grammar of Graphics
• The Grammar of Graphics (Leland Wilkinson, 2005) —a general scheme for data visualization
which breaks up graphs into semantic components:
– A plot is made up of layers
– A layer consists of data and a set of mappings between variables and aesthetics of geometric
objects. Some mappings require statistical transformation of data
– Scales control the details of the mapping
– All components
are independent and reusable
• R implementation –
package ggplot2
(Hadley Wickham, 2007)

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Mappings (points layer) - SPSS

4
 Mappings (points layer) – R/ggplot2

ggplot(data=catsales) +
geom_point(aes(x=Sales, y=Profit, colour=`Product Category`,
shape=Region, size=Quantity))

5
Aesthetic mapping exercise

6
Geoms exercise