Boxplot with individual data points



A boxplot summarizes the distribution of a continuous variable. it is often criticized for hiding the underlying distribution of each group. Thus, showing individual observation using jitter on top of boxes is a good practice. This post explains how to do so using ggplot2.

Boxplot Section Boxplot pitfalls

If you’re not convinced about that danger of using basic boxplot, please read this post that explains it in depth.

Fortunately, ggplot2 makes it a breeze to add invdividual observation on top of boxes thanks to the geom_jitter() function. This function shifts all dots by a random value ranging from 0 to size, avoiding overlaps.

Now, do you see the bimodal distribution hidden behind group B?

# Libraries
library(tidyverse)
library(hrbrthemes)
library(viridis)

# create a dataset
data <- data.frame(
  name=c( rep("A",500), rep("B",500), rep("B",500), rep("C",20), rep('D', 100)  ),
  value=c( rnorm(500, 10, 5), rnorm(500, 13, 1), rnorm(500, 18, 1), rnorm(20, 25, 4), rnorm(100, 12, 1) )
)

# Plot
data %>%
  ggplot( aes(x=name, y=value, fill=name)) +
    geom_boxplot() +
    scale_fill_viridis(discrete = TRUE, alpha=0.6) +
    geom_jitter(color="black", size=0.4, alpha=0.9) +
    theme_ipsum() +
    theme(
      legend.position="none",
      plot.title = element_text(size=11)
    ) +
    ggtitle("A boxplot with jitter") +
    xlab("")




In case you’re not convinced, here is how the basic boxplot and the basic violin plot look like:

# Boxplot basic
data %>%
  ggplot( aes(x=name, y=value, fill=name)) +
    geom_boxplot() +
    scale_fill_viridis(discrete = TRUE, alpha=0.6, option="A") +
    theme_ipsum() +
    theme(
      legend.position="none",
      plot.title = element_text(size=11)
    ) +
    ggtitle("Basic boxplot") +
    xlab("")

# Violin basic
data %>%
  ggplot( aes(x=name, y=value, fill=name)) +
    geom_violin() +
    scale_fill_viridis(discrete = TRUE, alpha=0.6, option="A") +
    theme_ipsum() +
    theme(
      legend.position="none",
      plot.title = element_text(size=11)
    ) +
    ggtitle("Violin chart") +
    xlab("")

Related chart types


Violin
Density
Histogram
Boxplot
Ridgeline



Contact

This document is a work by Yan Holtz. Any feedback is highly encouraged. You can fill an issue on Github, drop me a message on Twitter, or send an email pasting yan.holtz.data with gmail.com.

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