Source: Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality
Load in the library
Load library tidyverse in order to access dplyr and ggplot2
library(tidyverse)
── Attaching core tidyverse packages ──────────────────────── tidyverse 2.0.0 ──
✔ dplyr 1.1.4 ✔ readr 2.1.5
✔ forcats 1.0.0 ✔ stringr 1.5.1
✔ ggplot2 3.5.1 ✔ tibble 3.2.1
✔ lubridate 1.9.3 ✔ tidyr 1.3.1
✔ purrr 1.0.2
── Conflicts ────────────────────────────────────────── tidyverse_conflicts() ──
✖ dplyr::filter() masks stats::filter()
✖ dplyr::lag() masks stats::lag()
ℹ Use the conflicted package (<http://conflicted.r-lib.org/>) to force all conflicts to become errors
Load the dataset into your global environment
Because airquality is a pre-built dataset, we can write it to our data directory to store it for later use.
#works with and without "sdata("airquality")
The source for this dataset is the New York State Department of Conservation and the National Weather Service of 1973 for five months from May to September recorded daily.
Look at the structure of the data
In the global environment, click on the row with the airquality dataset and it will take you to a “spreadsheet” view of the data.
View the data using the “head” function
The function, head, will only disply the first 6 rows of the dataset. Notice in the global environment to the right, there are 153 observations (rows)
Notice that all the variables are classified as either integers or continuous values.
Calculate Summary Statistics
If you want to look at specific statistics, here are some variations on coding. Here are 2 different ways to calculate “mean.”
mean(airquality$Temp)
[1] 77.88235
mean(airquality[,4])
[1] 77.88235
For the second way to calculate the mean, the matrix [row,column] is looking for column #4, which is the Temp column and we use all rows
Calculate Median, Standard Deviation, and Variance
median(airquality$Temp)
[1] 79
sd(airquality$Wind)
[1] 3.523001
var(airquality$Wind)
[1] 12.41154
Rename the Months from number to names
Sometimes we prefer the months to be numerical, but here, we need them as the month names. There are MANY ways to do this. Here is one way to convert numbers 5 - 9 to May through September
See how Month has changed to have characters instead of numbers (it is now classified as “character” rather than “integer”)
summary(airquality$Month)
Length Class Mode
153 character character
Month is a categorical variable with different levels, called factors.
This is one way to reorder the Months so they do not default to alphabetical (you will see another way to reorder DIRECTLY in the chunk that creates the plot below in Plot #1
Here is a first attempt at viewing a histogram of temperature by the months May through September. We will see that temperatures increase over these months. The median temperature appears to be about 75 degrees.
fill = Month colors the histogram by months between May - Sept.
scale_fill_discrete(name = “Month”…) provides the month names on the right side as a legend in chronological order. This is a different way to order than what was shown above.
labs allows us to add a title, axes labels, and a caption for the data source
Plot 1 Code
p1 <- airquality |>ggplot(aes(x=Temp, fill=Month)) +geom_histogram(position="identity")+scale_fill_discrete(name ="Month", labels =c("May", "June","July", "August", "September")) +labs(x ="Monthly Temperatures from May - Sept", y ="Frequency of Temps",title ="Histogram of Monthly Temperatures from May - Sept, 1973",caption ="New York State Department of Conservation and the National Weather Service") #provide the data source
Plot 1 Output
p1
`stat_bin()` using `bins = 30`. Pick better value with `binwidth`.
Is this plot useful in answering questions about monthly temperature values?
Plot 2: Improve the histogram of Average Temperature by Month
Outline the bars in white using the color = “white” command
Use alpha to add some transparency (values between 0 and 1)
Change the binwidth
Add some transparency and white borders around the histogram bars.
Plot 2 Code
p2 <- airquality |>ggplot(aes(x=Temp, fill=Month)) +geom_histogram(position="identity", alpha=0.5, binwidth =5, color ="white")+scale_fill_discrete(name ="Month", labels =c("May", "June","July", "August", "September")) +labs(x ="Monthly Temperatures from May - Sept", y ="Frequency of Temps",title ="Histogram of Monthly Temperatures from May - Sept, 1973",caption ="New York State Department of Conservation and the National Weather Service")
Plot 2 Output
p2
Here July stands out for having high frequency of 85 degree temperatures. The dark purple color indicates overlaps of months due to the transparency.
Did this improve the readability of the plot?
Plot 3: Create side-by-side boxplots categorized by Month
We can see that August has the highest temperatures based on the boxplot distribution.
Plot 3 Code
p3 <- airquality |>ggplot(aes(Month, Temp, fill = Month)) +labs(x ="Months from May through September", y ="Temperatures", title ="Side-by-Side Boxplot of Monthly Temperatures",caption ="New York State Department of Conservation and the National Weather Service") +geom_boxplot() +scale_fill_discrete(name ="Month", labels =c("May", "June","July", "August", "September"))
Plot 3 Output
p3
Notice that the points above and below the boxplots in June and July are outliers.
Plot 4: Side by Side Boxplots in Gray Scale
Make the same side-by-side boxplots, but in grey-scale
Use the scale_fill_grey command for the grey-scale legend, and again, use fill=Month in the aesthetics.
Plot 4 Code
p4 <- airquality |>ggplot(aes(Month, Temp, fill = Month)) +labs(x ="Monthly Temperatures", y ="Temperatures", title ="Side-by-Side Boxplot of Monthly Temperatures",caption ="New York State Department of Conservation and the National Weather Service") +geom_boxplot()+scale_fill_grey(name ="Month", labels =c("May", "June","July", "August", "September"))
Plot 4 Output
p4
Plot 5:
Now make one new plot on your own, that is meaningfully different from the 4 I have shown you. You can select any of the variables in this dataset. Be sure to explore the dataset to see which variables are included that we have not explored yet. You may create a scatterplot, histogram, boxplot, or something else.
Be sure to include a title, axes labels, and caption for the datasource in your Plot 5. Then finally ……
Plot 5 Code
p5 <-ggplot(airquality, aes(Day, Temp)) +geom_line() +facet_wrap(~Month, ncol=5) +labs(x ="Day of the Month", y ="Temperature (degrees F)", title ="Daily Temperatures Over Five Months",caption ="New York State Department of Conservation and the National Weather Service")
Plot 5 Output
p5
Essay: Plot 5 Explanation
The plot Daily Temperatures Over Five Months is a faceted line graph that visualizes observed temperatures each day over a span of five months, with each month divided into a separate plot within the visualization. Side-by-side, it is easy to look for patterns within the frames of each month, but also over the entire time period. For example, it’s clear that temperatures in September generally decreased throughout the month, but were still typically higher than those in May.
The plot was built in four layers using the ggplot() function. The column containing the days of the month in the airquality dataset was mapped onto the horizontal axis, and the column of observed temperatures was mapped onto the vertical axis. The geom_line() function was used to connect the observations to form a line graph. As another modification, the facet_wrap() function split the one graph into separate graphs for each month of observation, making it easier to see the change over time. A final layer modified the labels, including the title, axis labels, and caption of the graph.
