Open Source R Graphics Software

ggplot2 is a system written in R for declaratively creating graphics. It is based on The Grammar of Graphics, which focuses on following a layered approach to describe and construct visualizations or graphics in a structured manner. With ggplot2 you simply provide the data, tell ggplot2 how to map variables to aesthetics, what graphical primitives to use, and it will take care of the rest. ggplot2 is over 10 years old and is used by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world for plotting. In most cases using ggplot2 starts with supplying a dataset and aesthetic mapping (with aes()); adding on layers (like geom_point() or geom_histogram()), scales (like scale_colour_brewer()), and faceting specifications (like facet_wrap()); and finally, coordinating systems. ggplot2 has a rich ecosystem of community-maintained extensions for those looking for more innovation. ggplot2 is a part of the tidyverse, an ecosystem of R packages designed for data science.

generativeart is an R package for creating algorithmic art by computing the positions of many thousands of points according to user-defined mathematical formulas with randomized parameters. Each render uses a seed to introduce controlled randomness, so every image is unique while remaining reproducible when the same seed and formula are reused. The package logs the seed, formula, and file name to a CSV, which makes it easy to catalog outputs, re-generate favorites, and track experiments. A small helper sets up a simple directory scaffold for “everything” versus “handpicked” images and a logfile folder, encouraging a tidy, iterative workflow. Rendering is performed with ggplot2, and users can select coordinate systems (Cartesian or polar), foreground/background colors, number of images to generate, and output format (PNG by default with other devices available).

gganimate extends the grammar of graphics as implemented by ggplot2 to include the description of animation. It does this by providing a range of new grammar classes that can be added to the plot object in order to customize how it should change with time. Here we take a simple boxplot of fuel consumption as a function of cylinders and let it transition between the number of gears available in the cars. As this is a discrete split (gear being best described as an ordered factor) we use transition_states and provide a relative length to use for transition and state view. As not all combinations of data are present there are states missing a box. We define that when a box appears it should fade into view, whereas it should shrink away when it disappears. Lastly, we decide to use a sinusoidal easing for all our aesthetics (here, only y is changing) gganimate is available on CRAN and can be installed with install.packages('gganimate').