R Graph Cookbook [Paperback]

Hrishi Mittal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 2011

Detailed hands-on recipes for creating the most useful types of graphs in R – starting from the simplest versions to more advanced applications

Overview

• Learn to draw any type of graph or visual data representation in R
• Filled with practical tips and techniques for creating any type of graph you need; not just theoretical explanations
• All examples are accompanied with the corresponding graph images, so you know what the results look like
• Each recipe is independent and contains the complete explanation and code to perform the task as efficiently as possible

In Detail

With more than two million users worldwide, R is one of the most popular open source projects. It is a free and robust statistical programming environment with very powerful graphical capabilities. Analyzing and visualizing data with R is a necessary skill for anyone doing any kind of statistical analysis, and this book will help you do just that in the easiest and most efficient way possible.

Unlike other books on R, this book takes a practical, hands-on approach and you dive straight into creating graphs in R right from the very first page.

You want to harness the power of this open source programming language to visually present and analyze your data in the best way possible – and this book will show you how.

The R Graph Cookbook takes a practical approach to teaching how to create effective and useful graphs using R. This practical guide begins by teaching you how to make basic graphs in R and progresses through subsequent dedicated chapters about each graph type in depth. It will demystify a lot of difficult and confusing R functions and parameters and enable you to construct and modify data graphics to suit your analysis, presentation, and publication needs.

You will learn all about making graphics such as scatter plots, line graphs, bar charts, pie charts, dot plots, heat maps, histograms and box plots. In addition, there are detailed recipes on making various combinations and advanced versions of these graphs. Dedicated chapters on polishing and finalizing graphs will enable you to produce professional-quality graphs for presentation and publication. With R Graph Cookbook in hand, making graphs in R has never been easier

What you will learn from this book

• Construct multiple graph matrix layouts
• Summarize multivariate datasets with a single graph
• Create custom graph functions to avoid code repetition
• Make and re-use visual themes for graphs
• Save and export graphs in various formats to print or publish
• Learn to use fonts and annotations in graphs on Windows, Mac, and Linux
• Combine different graph types to give a better visual summary of complex datasets
• Present geographical data on maps
• Use heatmaps to spot trends and anomalies in large datasets
• Add scientific annotations and formulae to label graphs
• Add text descriptions to create graph presentation handouts
• Create beautiful color palettes and apply them to graphs

Approach

This hands-on guide cuts short the preamble and gets straight to the point – actually creating graphs, instead of just theoretical learning. Each recipe is specifically tailored to fulfill your appetite for visually representing you data in the best way possible.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Hrishi V. Mittal

Hrishi Mittal has been working with R for a few years in different capacities. He was introduced to the exciting world of data analysis with R when he was working as Senior Air Quality Scientist at King's College London, where he used R extensively to analyze large amounts of air pollution and traffic data for informing the London Mayor's Air Quality Strategy. He has experience in various other programming languages, but prefers R for data analysis and visualization. He is actively involved in various R mailing lists, forums and the development of some R packages.

In early 2010, he started Pretty Graph Limited (prettygraph.com), a software company specializing in web-based data visualization products. The company's flagship product Pretty Graph uses R as the backend engine for helping researchers and businesses visualize and analyze data. The goal is to bring the power of R to a wider audience by providing a modern graphical user interface which can be accessed by anyone and from anywhere simply using a web browser.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (January 14, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1849513066
• ISBN-13: 978-1849513067
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.6 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #755,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #56 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Compilers

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A user-friendly first reference August 21, 2011

By Dimitri Shvorob

Format:Paperback

I rewrote this review after reading the second edition of Murrell's "R Graphics" and "R Graphics for Microsoft Windows" by Takezawa. My current thinking is that Murrell's book is the one you want to eventually end up with, but Mittal's and Takezawa's can be useful stepping stones, filling the gap between one's first R book - I would suggest Robert Kabacoff's "R in Action" - and Murrell's volume. Between the two, Mittal's is decidedly prettier, and somewhat friendlier; on the other hand, Takezawa's book has more material. All three books are overpriced; thankfully, one can resell a book after reading.

UPD. Things changed again. Winston Chang's reasonably-priced "R Graphics Cookbook" is a very accessible and substantial tour of R graphics using "ggplot2" package, and if you want to go with the "old school", more popular "base" R graphics, second edition of Michael Crawley's "R Book" has boosted its graphics coverage. Murrell's book is still a sensible follow-up, but I am not sure I am still in favor of Mittal's and Takezawa's.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Completely useful June 27, 2011

By I Teach Typing

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Because R has so many libraries full of great graphic procedures, you will never get a book with everything you need but this book is pretty darn excellent. As you can see from the table of contents, this book covers all the graphics you typically see in scientific publications. The examples for every type of graphic start out really easy (like do a basic scatter plot) and build to complex multiple panel layouts with many options set (like how to render a PDF with a scatterplot with custom titles symbols, fonts, and histograms on the margins). None of the examples are contrived or just "show off." Everything flows and the graphics are excellent and practical.

What is particularly nice about the book is the level of repetition. Commonly used global graphics parameters are discussed early in the book and then show up in great examples in later chapters (explained at a good level in context). So, if you can plow through the details and memorize the parameters out of context you can or if you prefer to learn through examples you get to see the parameters used later.

On the down side there are a few typos (like where the code says the labels are horizontal but the graph has them vertical) and the graphics are all done in black-and-white. The code and data-sets are easy to download so the lack of color is not much of a drag. A more substantial complaint is that there is not enough about the lattice or ggplot2 R packages and there is nothing useful on making interactive graphs. Even with these failures, this book is totally fantastic for the beginner to intermediate level R user.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Makes graphing much easier April 16, 2011

By Richard J. Wagner

Format:Paperback

This book is designed for the experienced R user who wants to begin using the impressive graphic capabilities of R. While that's an ideal audience, I'd go a step farther and suggest that even an R novice could use this book to produce impressive graphs.

The book explains the various graph types (scatter plots, line plots, pie graphs, bar charts, histograms, box and whisker plots, heat maps, contour maps, regular maps, etc.) and how to make them. IMHO, one of the best features of the book is the downloadable source code and sample data. If you have a need to produce a given type of graph-- let's say a pie chart-- you can download the code and data, and quickly see the effects of changing the multitude of options available to you.

The book comes in Packt's 'recipe' format, which means a template-format is used for each section. In this case, I'd say it works pretty well. If I had one wish to improve the book, I'd wish for a comprehensive index that covers the various functions and arguments that enhance the basic functionality of each graph type. These are frequently re-usable across the different graph types, so it would help you to 'mix and mash' your own graphs if such an index existed.

All things considered, this book has a welcome place on my reference shelf. When I need to produce some impressive business graphs, I know where I'm going to reach first.

3.0 out of 5 stars A true cookbook January 6, 2013

By Dirk Dittmer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a true cook-book for generating graphs in R. Similar in layout then O'Reiley series. It gives you recipes to follow and they work and it is handy reference set to have. Most of the code snippets are printed versions of R bloggers posts or online vignettes. I find it useful, because I like paper manuals and book is very well organized, i.e. the code snips are easier to find than googeling on the web. Once has to decide, whether this is worth paying for or whether it is easier to maintain a list of bookmarks.

It does not explain R graphics. For that you would need the Paul Murrell's book, which is the standard, but does not cover some of the nicer examples shown here.

This book does not explain ggplot / qplot/ ggplot2 graphics to any degree. For that Hadley Wickham's book in the Springer Use R! series is a must.

3.0 out of 5 stars Very good cookbook style but content-wise it is weak December 11, 2012

By bomgaroto

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I've purchased this book because I wanted a handy reference on producing graphs in R that would be a companion for the O'Reilly's "R Cookbook" R Cookbook (O'Reilly Cookbooks) that I also own, but I was a little disappointed. The former is a great book, but this one leaves one wanting more. The cookbook style is good, i.e., if the information is there you can easily find what you're looking for. However, the downside is that the content in the book is poor in my opinion. Many important things are lacking (nothing on 3d plots with persp() for example, which IS the basic workhorse behind 3d plotting after all). The book also has lots of white space all over, and some unnecessary repetitive figures. All in all the book could be several pages shorter or be better worked on and include more meaningful content. Personally, I've opened it a few times to search for a couple of things, but eventually I closed it, set it back on my shelf and stuck with the online documentation.