Clutter and focus

Materials for class on Monday, November 6, 2017

Contents

Slides

Download the slides from today’s lecture.

Fonts, colors, and accessibility

See the relevant sections in the Reference page.

Refining and enhancing plots in Illustrator

Data: Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog contest winners⊕ Data originally from FlowingData.

Plot with transparent background:

library(tidyverse)

hotdogs <- read_csv("data/hot-dog-contest-winners.csv") %>%
  rename(dogs = `Dogs eaten`, record = `New record`) %>%
  mutate(record = factor(record))

plot_hotdogs <- ggplot(hotdogs, aes(x = Year, y = dogs, fill = record)) + 
  geom_col() + 
  scale_fill_manual(values = c("grey80", "#FC7300")) +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = seq(1980, 2010, 2), expand = c(0, 0)) +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks = seq(0, 70, 10), expand = c(0, 0)) +
  guides(fill = FALSE) +
  labs(y = "Hot dogs and buns", x = NULL) +
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(panel.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent", colour = NA),
        plot.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent", colour = NA),
        axis.ticks.x = element_line(size = 0.25),
        panel.grid.major.x = element_blank(),
        panel.grid.major.y = element_line(size = 0.5, linetype = "dashed"),
        panel.grid.minor = element_blank())

plot_hotdogs

ggsave(plot_hotdogs, filename = "output/hotdogs.pdf",
       width = 7, height = 4, units = "in", bg = "transparent")

Text for annotations:

• Winners from Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest
• It’s that time of year again. Since 1916, the annual eating competition has grown substantially attracting competitors from around the world
• Frank Dellarosa eats 21 and a half HDBs over 12 minutes, breaking the previous record of 19 and a half
• Through 2001-2005, Takeru Kobayashi wins by no less than 12 HDBs. In 2006 he only wins by 1.75. After winning 6 years in a row and setting the world record 4 times, Kobayashi places second in 2007.
• For the first time since 1999, an American reclaims the title when Joey Chestnut consumes 66 HDBs, a new world record. Chestnut repeats in 2008.
• Source: Wikipedia and Nathan’s Famous

Enhanced plot:

Feedback for today

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1. What new thing did you learn today?
2. What was the most unclear thing about today’s class?
3. What was the most exciting thing you learned today?