Abstract
This workshop will teach you how to manipulate and structure your data for visualizations, graph elements, and their associated terminology, how to select the appropriate graph based on your data, and how to avoid common graphing mistakes. You will also learn how to customize data visualizations and give them the ‘personal touches’ that make them memorable to your audience. Data are rarely collected or stored in a format that’s ready for creating visualizations. We’ll cover how to reshape your data into a graph-friendly structure, how to convert columns into different formats, and how to quickly count, summarize, and inspect values before creating graphs. Practice building graphs layer-by-layer using the grammar of graphics. We will work through a series of charts step-by-step, from basic plots to complex, polished visualizations. You’ll learn how to ‘map’ columns in your dataset to ‘aesthetics,’ choose different graphs types (geoms) based on the data type, and how to clearly (and concisely!) label your graph. You will learn how to build a wide range of graphs using ggplot2 and refine plots for effective presentation. You will be able to highlight important aspects of your data, label and annotate key features, and customize their overall appearance. We will conclude with some tips on and strategies for presenting visualizations to different audiences.
