Series

ggplot2-series

This series contains a great deal of tips, tricks and packages that you can use to level up your ggplot game.

All blog posts

How to enhance your Shiny apps with JavaScript (JS) without knowing much JS

Shiny

JavaScript

Every now and then I need JavaScript to enhance my Shiny apps. But I don’t actually know much about JS. In this blog post, I show you how I still make JS stuff work.

Dec 1, 2022

12 min

Bar plot checklist

Visualization

Bar charts are easy to make but hard to perfect. Let’s create a small checklist to make things easier.

Nov 21, 2022

6 min

Alternatives to paired bar charts

Visualization

We take a look at a couple alternatives to paired bar charts.

Oct 22, 2022

12 min

The ultimate beginner’s guide to generalized linear models (GLMs)

Statistics

This is an beginner’s guide on GLMs. We cover the mathematical foundations as well as how to implement GLMs with R. The implementations are done with and without {tidymodels}.

Aug 12, 2022

18 min

Forget regular heat maps. Use bubbles on a grid!

Visualization

We explore alternatives for heat maps to take sample sizes into account.

Aug 10, 2022

7 min

Alternative ways to visualize correlations

Visualization

We explore alternative correlation matrix plots.

Aug 1, 2022

6 min

5 hidden gems from gg-packages to level up your dataviz game

Visualization

This blog post is a quick one. It highlights a few hidden gems (functions) from well-known or not so well-known packages.

Jul 27, 2022

10 min

The ultimate guide to starting a Quarto blog

This blog post is an in-depth guide on how to start blogging with Quarto.

Jul 24, 2022

40 min

How to embed a Shiny app into your blog posts

Shiny

Shorts

This is a one-minute blog post to share how to incorporate Shiny apps in blog posts.

May 9, 2022

0 min

Use {lubridate} and {rtweet} to analyze your Twitter timeline

Visualization

API

We take a quick look at the rtweet and lubridate package. These help you to analyse your Twitter timeline. And they helped me to visualize my follower count as I reached 1000 followers this week.

May 6, 2022

8 min

Storytelling in ggplot using rounded rectangles

Visualization

We build rebuild a ‘Storytelling with Data’ plot which uses rounded rectangles. I’ll show you an easy and a hard way to make rectangles round.

May 4, 2022

18 min

6 Lessons that I learned from teaching R to non-programmers

Opinion

I held a short workshop teaching R to Economics students. Here are six things that I wish I had known in advance.

Apr 15, 2022

11 min

How to collect dataviz from Twitter into your note-taking system

Automation

API

The goal is to send a tweet’s URL to a dummy mail account and let R extract it, call the Twitter API and then put everything as a Markdown file into your note-taking system.

Apr 14, 2022

20 min

Recreating the Storytelling with Data look with ggplot

Visualization

We try to imitate the Storytelling with Data look with ggplot

Mar 29, 2022

18 min

How to use functional programming for ggplot

Visualization

Functional Programming

Functional programming is a mighty sword. Today, we use it to avoid tedious repetitions when things go wrong in ggplot.

Mar 25, 2022

6 min

How to use Fonts and Icons in ggplot

Visualization

This is a short tutorial on how to import fonts and icons in R using the showtext package.

Mar 4, 2022

6 min

4 Ways to use colors in ggplot more efficiently

Visualization

Inspired by a datawrapper blogpost, we explore how to work with fewer colors in ggplot.

Feb 19, 2022

12 min

Interactive ggplots, user feedback, and a little bit of Javascript magic with Shiny

Shiny

Here’s how I turned a ggplot interactive using Shiny and what else I learned while building that app

Jan 17, 2022

10 min

Showcasing the janitor package

I demonstrate a couple of functions from the janitor package I find quite useful

Jan 12, 2022

3 min

ggplot-tips: Learning by Thieving

Visualization

Opinion

I advocate to take part in the TidyTuesday events to learn with and from others.

Jan 10, 2022

3 min

A couple of visualizations from ggforce

Visualization

The ggplot2-tips series is continued with a few example plots from the ggforce package

Dec 31, 2021

8 min

6 simple Shiny things I have learned from creating a somewhat small app

Shiny

I recently built a small Shiny app. Here are 6 things I learned doing that. Maybe a Shiny beginner will find something useful in here.

Dec 9, 2021

14 min

ggplot tips: Arranging plots

Visualization

The patchwork and ggforce packages can be used to compose plots from multiple subplots. Let’s have a look at how that works.

Oct 28, 2021

8 min

An Exploratory Introduction to the Plotly Package

Visualization

Exploratory Intro

We try to do a few simple things with the plotly package in order to figure out how it works.

Oct 16, 2021

12 min

Did German Voters Become More Impulsive?

We try to find out if voters in Germany became more impulsive over time.

Oct 3, 2021

13 min

Writing Versatile Functions with R

Functional Programming

Using concepts like dot-dot-dot and curly-curly we create functions that are more versatile and can be used in multiple settings.

Sep 16, 2021

11 min

ggplot tips: Using position_stack() for Individual Positioning

Visualization

We take a look at the differences between position = ‘stack’ and position = position_stack().

Sep 11, 2021

3 min

ggplot tips: Assigning Labels to an Aesthetic

Visualization

We talk about how to easily create labels for an aesthetic.

Aug 19, 2021

5 min

Beginning a ggplot2 Series: Logarithmize Your Scales

Visualization

This is the beginning of a series about a few ggplot2 tricks I picked up along the way. In this first installment we talk about how logarithmizing scales can be beneficial.

Aug 7, 2021

5 min