# Plotting with plotnine, Part 2¶

The plotnine tutorial below is derived (with generous permission) from a truely excellent tutorial for ggplot2 (written for R) by Rebecca Barter, who hosts an excellent data science in R blog. It is very close to her original materials, with changes made primarily to convert R ggplot2 code into plotnine code (which is remakrably easy.

## Scales¶

We are going to return to our original scatterplot example to discuss scales, legend and positioning.

To remind you, this scatterplot showed GDP per capita against life expectancy for each country colored by continent and sized by population.

To keep things simple, let’s filter to a single year.

[13]:

gapminder_2007 = gapminder[gapminder.year == 2007]

[14]:

(ggplot(gapminder_2007, aes(x ='gdpPercap', y='lifeExp', color='continent', size='pop')) +
geom_point(alpha=0.5)
)

[14]:

<ggplot: (-9223372029312629956)>


The scale of a plot describes the features of the space in which it is plotted. Arguably, it would be better to show gdpPercap on a logarithmic scale, rather than in its raw form. Fortunately, this is easy to do using a scale function, which can be considered another layer that transforms our plot.

[15]:

(ggplot(gapminder_2007, aes(x='gdpPercap', y='lifeExp', color='continent', size='pop')) +
geom_point(alpha = 0.5) +
scale_x_log10()
)

[15]:

<ggplot: (-9223372029312645660)>


The default x- (and y-) axes scales are scale_x_continuous and scale_y_continuous, but other options include scale_x_sqrt and scale_x_reverse.

Each of these scale functions has many options including changing the limits, the breaks, etc. For example in the plot below, we manipulate the x-axis by providing arguments to our scale function of choice.

[16]:

(ggplot(gapminder_2007, aes(x='gdpPercap', y='lifeExp', color='continent', size='pop')) +
geom_point(alpha = 0.5) +
# clean the x-axis breaks
scale_x_log10(breaks = [1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000],
limits = [1, 120000])
)

[16]:

<ggplot: (-9223372029312645800)>


We could also manipulate the scale of the size variable. Below, we expand the range of sizes and clean up the variable name. Since the variable we provided for size is a continuous variable (pop) we use the scale_size_continuous argument.

[17]:

(ggplot(gapminder_2007, aes(x='gdpPercap', y='lifeExp', color='continent', size='pop')) +
geom_point(alpha = 0.5) +
# log-scale the x-axis
scale_x_log10(name='GDP Per Capita') +
# change the size scale
scale_size(range = [0.1, 10],
breaks =  [250000000, 500000000, 750000000, 1000000000, 1250000000],
labels = ["250", "500", "750", "1000", "1250"])
)

[17]:

<ggplot: (7542991659)>


Scales also exist for other aesthetic featuers such as fill, color, alpha, etc.

## Changing Labels¶

Notice that in the last plot, we changed the name of the x-axis using the name argument in scale_x_log10(). If you want to play with all your labels in one place, though, we can use the labs option. As an example, below we add a title and change the name of the y-axis and legends using the labs function.

[18]:

(ggplot(gapminder_2007, aes(x='gdpPercap', y='lifeExp', color='continent', size='pop')) +
geom_point(alpha = 0.5) +
# log-scale the x-axis
scale_x_log10() +
# change labels
labs(title="GDP versus life expectancy in 2007",
x="GDP per capita (log scale)",
y="Life expectancy",
size="Popoulation",
color="Continent")
)

[18]:

<ggplot: (-9223372029312856274)>


## Faceting¶

Sometimes we want to be able to make multiple plots of the same thing across different categories. This can be achieved with minimal repetition using faceting.

In the example below, we will remake the plot above individually for each continent.

[19]:

(ggplot(gapminder_2007, aes(x='gdpPercap', y='lifeExp', color='continent', size='pop')) +
geom_point(alpha = 0.5) +
# log-scale the x-axis
scale_x_log10() +
# change labels
labs(title = "GDP versus life expectancy in 2007",
x = "GDP per capita (log scale)",
y = "Life expectancy",
size = "Popoulation (millions)",
color = "Continent") +
# change the size scale
scale_size(range = [0.1, 10],
breaks =  [250000000, 500000000, 750000000, 1000000000, 1250000000],
labels = ["250", "500", "750", "1000", "1250"]) +
facet_wrap('continent')
)

[19]:

<ggplot: (-9223372029312635420)>


## Themes: making even more beautiful figures with plotnine¶

One of the first things I usually do when I make a ggplot is edit the default theme. I actually really don’t like the grey background, nor do I like having a grid unless it really helps with the plot interpretation.

One of the simplest themes is theme_classic, however there are several other themes to choose from. The ggthemes package offers many additional themes, but you could also make your own using the theme() function.

[20]:

(ggplot(gapminder_2007, aes(x='gdpPercap', y='lifeExp', color='continent', size='pop')) +
geom_point(alpha = 0.5) +
# log-scale the x-axis
scale_x_log10() +
# change labels
labs(title = "GDP versus life expectancy in 2007",
x = "GDP per capita (log scale)",
y = "Life expectancy",
size = "Popoulation (millions)",
color = "Continent") +
# change the size scale
scale_size(range = [0.1, 10],
breaks =  [250000000, 500000000, 750000000, 1000000000, 1250000000],
labels = ["250", "500", "750", "1000", "1250"]) +
theme_classic(base_family = "Helvetica")
)

[20]:

<ggplot: (7542991743)>


As an example of further customization of the ggplot theme, below we do the following:

• grey the axes lines (set axis.line = element_blank() in theme())

• add some text annotations (add geom_text layer)

[21]:

(ggplot(gapminder_2007) +
geom_point(aes(x='gdpPercap', y='lifeExp', color='continent', size='pop'),
alpha = 0.5) +
# add some text annotations for the very large countries
geom_text(aes(x='gdpPercap', y='lifeExp', label='country'),
color="grey",
data=gapminder_2007[(gapminder_2007['pop'] > 1000000000) | (gapminder_2007.country == "Nigeria") |  (gapminder_2007.country == "United States")]) +
# clean the axes names and breaks
scale_x_log10(limits = [200, 60000]) +
# change labels
labs(title = "GDP versus life expectancy in 2007",
x = "GDP per capita (log scale)",
y = "Life expectancy",
size = "Popoulation",
color = "Continent") +
# change the size scale
scale_size(range = [0.1, 10]) +
theme_classic() +
# place legend at top and grey axis lines
theme(axis_line=element_line(color="grey"),
axis_ticks=element_line(color = "grey"))
)

[21]:

<ggplot: (7543731818)>


## Exercises!¶

If you are enrolled in Practical Data Science at Duke, don’t do these exercises on your own – we’ll do them in class!

Plotting Exercises, Part 2