How to Plot Factors in R - Step by Step Examples

How to Plot Factors in R ?

Answer

To plot factors in R, you can use various plotting functions from the base R and ggplot2 packages to visualize the distribution and relationships of categorical data. Common plots include bar plots and pie charts, which help in understanding the frequency and proportion of factor levels.


✐ Examples

1 Creating a Bar Plot for a Factor Representing Fruit Types

In this example,

  1. We start by creating a character vector named fruits which contains the values 'Apple', 'Banana', 'Cherry', 'Apple', and 'Banana'. This vector represents different types of fruits.
  2. Next, we use the factor() function to convert the fruits vector into a factor. We assign the result to a variable named fruit_factor. The factor() function automatically identifies the unique levels of the vector.
  3. We then use the table() function to create a table of counts for each level of the fruit_factor. We assign the result to a variable named fruit_counts.
  4. We use the barplot() function to create a bar plot of the fruit_counts. The barplot() function takes the counts and plots a bar for each level of the factor.
  5. We add labels to the bar plot using the main, xlab, and ylab arguments to provide a title and axis labels.

R Program

fruits <- c('Apple', 'Banana', 'Cherry', 'Apple', 'Banana')
fruit_factor <- factor(fruits)
fruit_counts <- table(fruit_factor)
barplot(fruit_counts, main='Fruit Types', xlab='Fruit', ylab='Count')

2 Creating a Pie Chart for a Factor Representing Car Brands

In this example,

  1. We start by creating a character vector named cars which contains the values 'Toyota', 'Ford', 'Honda', 'Toyota', 'Ford', and 'Honda'. This vector represents different car brands.
  2. Next, we use the factor() function to convert the cars vector into a factor. We assign the result to a variable named car_factor. The factor() function automatically identifies the unique levels of the vector.
  3. We then use the table() function to create a table of counts for each level of the car_factor. We assign the result to a variable named car_counts.
  4. We use the pie() function to create a pie chart of the car_counts. The pie() function takes the counts and plots a slice for each level of the factor.
  5. We add a title to the pie chart using the main argument to provide context for the visualization.

R Program

cars <- c('Toyota', 'Ford', 'Honda', 'Toyota', 'Ford', 'Honda')
car_factor <- factor(cars)
car_counts <- table(car_factor)
pie(car_counts, main='Car Brands')

3 Creating a Bar Plot for a Factor Representing Employee Departments Using ggplot2

In this example,

  1. We start by creating a data frame named employees which contains two columns: name and department. The name column represents employee names, and the department column represents their respective departments (with values 'HR', 'Finance', and 'IT').
  2. Next, we use the ggplot2 package to create a bar plot. We load the ggplot2 package using the library() function.
  3. We use the ggplot() function to create the plot object. We pass the employees data frame and specify the aesthetics using aes(x=department) to set the x-axis to the department factor.
  4. We add a bar plot layer using the geom_bar() function, which will automatically count the occurrences of each department.
  5. We add labels to the plot using the labs() function to provide a title and axis labels.
  6. We display the plot by printing the ggplot object.

R Program

library(ggplot2)
employees <- data.frame(name = c('John', 'Sara', 'Mike', 'Anna', 'Tom'), department = c('HR', 'Finance', 'IT', 'HR', 'Finance'))
ggplot(employees, aes(x=department)) + geom_bar() + labs(title='Employee Departments', x='Department', y='Count')

Summary

In this tutorial, we learned How to Plot Factors in R language with well detailed examples.


More R Factors Tutorials

  1. How to Create Factors in R ?
  2. How to find Length of a Factor in R ?
  3. How to Loop over a Factor in R ?
  4. How to Convert Data to Factors in R ?
  5. How to Order Factor Levels in R ?
  6. How to Access Factor Levels in R ?
  7. How to Modify Factor Levels in R ?
  8. How to Reorder Factor Levels in R ?
  9. How to Add Levels to a Factor in R ?
  10. How to Drop Levels from a Factor in R ?
  11. How to Rename Levels of a Factor in R ?
  12. How to Use Factors in Data Frames in R ?
  13. How to Generate Summary Statistics for Factors in R ?
  14. How to Merge Factors in R ?
  15. How to Split Data by Factors in R ?
  16. How to Plot Factors in R ?
  17. How to Convert Factors to Numeric in R ?
  18. How to Convert Factors to Character in R ?
  19. How to Handle Missing Values in Factors in R ?
  20. How to Use Factors in Conditional Statements in R ?
  21. How to Compare Factors in R ?
  22. How to Create Ordered Factors in R ?
  23. How to Check if a Variable is a Factor in R ?
  24. How to Use Factors in Statistical Models in R ?
  25. How to Collapse Factor Levels in R ?
  26. How to Use Factors in Grouping Operations in R ?
  27. How to Use Factors in Aggregation Functions in R ?
  28. How to Deal with Unused Factor Levels in R ?
  29. How to Encode and Decode Factors in R ?
  30. How to Use Factors in Regression Analysis in R ?
  31. How to Convert Factors to Dates in R ?