Double and flipped axes

Intermediate Data Visualization with ggplot2

Rick Scavetta

Founder, Scavetta Academy

Typical axis modifications

Aspect ratios (see video 1)
- Adjust for best perspective
Transformation functions (e.g. log, see video 2)
- Adjust if original scale is inappropriate
Double x or y axes
- Add raw and transformed values
Flipped axes
- Change direction of dependencies
- Change geometry orientation

Typical axis modifications

Aspect ratios (see video 1)
- Adjust for best perspective
Transformation functions (e.g. log, see video 2)
- Adjust if original scale is inappropriate
Double x or y axes
- Add raw and transformed values
Flipped axes
- Change direction of dependencies
- Change geometry orientation

¹ See chapter 4, video 3 for more discussion on double x and y-axes.

Double axes

scale relabeled

Adding raw and transformed axes

with annotations

Typical axis modifications

Aspect ratios (see video 1)
- Adjust for best perspective
Transformation functions (e.g. log, see video 2)
- Adjust if original scale is inappropriate
Double x or y axes
- Add raw and transformed values
Flipped axes
- Change direction of dependencies
- Change geometry orientation

Flipping axes

ggplot(iris, aes(x = Sepal.Length, 
                 y = Sepal.Width, 
                 color = Species)) + 
  geom_point() +
  geom_smooth(method = "lm", 
              se = FALSE)

coord_flip()

ggplot(iris, aes(x = Sepal.Length, 
                 y = Sepal.Width, 
                 color = Species)) + 
  geom_point() +
  geom_smooth(method = "lm", 
              se = FALSE) +
  coord_flip()

Let's practice!

Intermediate Data Visualization with ggplot2