Workshop 2: Data visualisation using R

Fursham Hamid

Overview


Duration: 2 hours

Objectives

  1. Format data-frames for visualisation purposes
  2. State the various available R packages for plotting
  3. Use ggplot2 to generate publication quality graphics
  4. Apply geometry, aesthetic, and statistics layers to a ggplot plot
  5. Manipulate the aesthetics of a plot using different colors, shapes, and lines
  6. Improve data visualization through transforming scales and paneling by group
  7. Save a plot created with ggplot to disk

Before starting the lesson

Please ensure that you have the latest version of R and RStudio installed on your computer. You may refer to this link for step-by-step instructions on downloading these software.

We will be using two R packages for our tutorial: ggplot2 and ggpubr. Please install these packages by typing the following command in RStudio console

install.packages(c("ggplot2", "ggpubr"))

During the lesson, we will be using etherpad, an online collaborative platform for our discussions and activities. The link to this workshop’s etherpad page can be found here. You may bookmark this page before the lesson commence!


Lesson schedule

10:00 Introduction and overview Why visualize data using programming language?
10:10 1. Data structure for plotting How should I format my data to facilitate visualisation in R?
How do I reshape my data?
10:20 2. R packages for data visualisation What packages can I use to plot data?
10:40 Break and prepare for hands-on session
11:00 3. Creating Publication-Quality Graphics with ggplot2 How can I create publication-quality graphics in R?
12:00 Finish