Exercise 6: More plotting options#

In this homework, you’ll practice more advanced plotting options from ggplot.

Just like the prior homework, we will be using the gapminder dataset. It contains information about population, life expectancy and per capita GDP by country over time.

1. Multipanel figures (7 points)#

Last week, we visualized the change in life expectancy over time for every country in one plot. An alternative method is to use facet panels to split each country into its own plot.

To start, load the gapminder dataset from the last set of exercises, as well as the tidyverse.

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Next, create a subset of data that only includes the 25 countries from the Americas continent. Now we can add a facet_wrap layer to our line plot to create the panels by country. Additionally, to make the x-axis values easier to read, add a theme layer to rotate the text by 45 degrees.

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Imagine that we wanted to publish this figure in a manuscript. Make the following changes to the code from the previous question to create a cleaner figure:

  • Change the y-axis label (using labs layer)

  • Add a figure title (using labs layer)

  • Add a legend (using labs layer)

  • Rotate x-axis value text to 90 degrees

Hint: legend titles are set using the same names used in the aes specification. So, we need to add a color aes mapping to the global plot definition and reference this in the labs layer to specify the legend name.

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Now let’s look at how life expectancy varies by continent over time. Create a multipanel figure where each panel contains five boxplots (one for each continent) and each panel represents one year of data. Include a legend instead of x-axis title and labels.

Hint: the theme layer allows you to set attributes as element_blank().

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2. Increasing data density (3 pts)#

The above plots have nice readability, but they probably use more ink than is necessary. Take your boxplots from the last question and edit them to improve the data-to-ink ratio.

Hint: Double check your axis labels!

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DUE: 5pm EST, Feb 19, 2024

IMPORTANT Did you collaborate with anyone on this assignment? If so, list their names here.

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