Abstract
ggplot2 is an R package for producing statistical, or data, graphics, but it is unlike most other graphics packages because it has a deep underlying grammar. This grammar, based on the Grammar of Graphics (Wilkinson, 2005), is made up of a set of independent components that can be composed in many different ways. This makes ggplot2 very powerful because you are not limited to a set of pre-specified graphics, but you can create new graphics that are precisely tailored for your problem. This may sound overwhelming, but because there is a simple set of core principles and very few special cases, ggplot2 is also easy to learn (although it may take a little time to forget your preconceptions from other graphics tools).
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Wickham, H. (2016). Introduction. In: ggplot2. Use R!. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24277-4_1
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