The Median Data Scientist

Recently, a colleague told us about the highcharter data visualization package. It seems to have wrappers for Javascript functionality, so we could aim for pop-up information and other interactivity. Perhaps highcharter is more robust than plotly in some ways, but we cannot simply add to ggplot2 code has highcharter has its own syntax.

library("highcharter")
library("palmerpenguins")
library("tidyverse")

Grammer of Graphics

We will create a simple scatterplot in ggplot2.

penguins |>
  ggplot() +
  geom_point(aes(x = flipper_length_mm, y = bill_length_mm,
             color = species)) +
  labs(title = "Scatterplot in ggplot2",
       subtitle = "Data source: Palmer Penguins",
       caption = "SML 201")

Highcharter

We will create a simple scatterplot in highcharter.

hchart(
  penguins,
  "scatter",
  hcaes(x = flipper_length_mm, y = bill_length_mm,
        group = species)
) |>
  hc_title(text = "Scatterplot in Highcharter") |>
  hc_subtitle(text = "Data source: Palmer Penguins") |>
  hc_caption(text = "SML 201")