University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Categorical Data

Categorical data can be

For visualization, the main difference is that ordinal data suggests a particular display order.

Purely categorical data can come in a range of formats. The most common are

Raw Data

Raw data for a survey of individuals that records hair color, eye color, and gender of 592 individuals might look like this:

head(raw)
##    Hair   Eye    Sex
## 1 Brown  Blue   Male
## 2 Brown Brown   Male
## 3 Brown Hazel   Male
## 4 Blond Green Female
## 5 Brown Brown Female
## 6 Brown Hazel   Male

Aggregated Data

One way to aggregate raw categorical data is to use count from dplyr:

library(dplyr)
agg <- count(raw, Hair, Eye, Sex)
head(agg)
##    Hair   Eye    Sex  n
## 1 Black Brown   Male 32
## 2 Black Brown Female 36
## 3 Black  Blue   Male 11
## 4 Black  Blue Female  9
## 5 Black Hazel   Male 10
## 6 Black Hazel Female  5

The count_ function from dplyr allows the variables to use to be read from the data:

agg <- count_(raw, names(raw))
## Warning: `count_()` was deprecated in dplyr 0.7.0.
## Please use `count()` instead.
## See vignette('programming') for more help
## This warning is displayed once every 8 hours.
## Call `lifecycle::last_lifecycle_warnings()` to see where this warning was generated.
head(agg)
##    Hair   Eye    Sex  n
## 1 Black Brown   Male 32
## 2 Black Brown Female 36
## 3 Black  Blue   Male 11
## 4 Black  Blue Female  9
## 5 Black Hazel   Male 10
## 6 Black Hazel Female  5

Cross-Tabulated Data

Cross-tabulated data can be produced from aggregate data using xtabs:

xtabs(n ~ Hair + Eye + Sex, data = agg)
## , , Sex = Male
## 
##        Eye
## Hair    Brown Blue Hazel Green
##   Black    32   11    10     3
##   Brown    53   50    25    15
##   Red      10   10     7     7
##   Blond     3   30     5     8
## 
## , , Sex = Female
## 
##        Eye
## Hair    Brown Blue Hazel Green
##   Black    36    9     5     2
##   Brown    66   34    29    14
##   Red      16    7     7     7
##   Blond     4   64     5     8

Cross-tabulated data can be produced from raw data using table:

xtb <- table(raw)
xtb
## , , Sex = Male
## 
##        Eye
## Hair    Brown Blue Hazel Green
##   Black    32   11    10     3
##   Brown    53   50    25    15
##   Red      10   10     7     7
##   Blond     3   30     5     8
## 
## , , Sex = Female
## 
##        Eye
## Hair    Brown Blue Hazel Green
##   Black    36    9     5     2
##   Brown    66   34    29    14
##   Red      16    7     7     7
##   Blond     4   64     5     8

  • Both raw and aggregate date in this example are in tidy form; the cross-tabulated date is not.

  • Cross-tabulated data on \(p\) variables is arranged in a \(p\)-way array.

  • The cross-tabulated data can be converted to the tidy aggregate form using as.data.frame:

class(xtb)
## [1] "table"
head(as.data.frame(xtb))
##    Hair   Eye  Sex Freq
## 1 Black Brown Male   32
## 2 Brown Brown Male   53
## 3   Red Brown Male   10
## 4 Blond Brown Male    3
## 5 Black  Blue Male   11
## 6 Brown  Blue Male   50

The variable xtb corresponds to the data set HairEyeColor in the datasets package,

Working With Categorical Variables

Categorical variables are usually represented as:

  • character vectors
  • factors.

Some advantages of factors:

  • more control over ordering of levels
  • levels are preserved when forming subsets

Most plotting and modeling functions will convert character vectors to factors with levels ordered alphabetically.

Some standard R functions for working with factors include

  • factor creates a factor from another type of variable
  • levels returns the levels of a factor
  • reorder changes level order to match another variable
  • relevel moves a particular level to the first position as a base line
  • droplevels removes levels not in the variable.

The tidyverse package forcats adds some more tools, including

  • fct_inorder creates a factor with levels ordered by first appearance
  • fct_infreq orders levels by decreasing frequency
  • fct_rev reverses the levels
  • fct_recode changes factor levels
  • fct_relevel moves one or more levels
  • fct_c merges two or more factors

Bar Charts For Frequencies

Basics

The bar chart is often used to show the frequencies of a categorical variable.

By default, geom_bar uses stat = "count" and maps its result to the y aesthetic. This is suitable for raw data:

ggplot(raw) + geom_bar(aes(x = Hair))

For a nominal variable it is often better to order the bars by decreasing frequency:

library(forcats)
ggplot(mutate(raw, Hair = fct_infreq(Hair))) + geom_bar(aes(x = Hair))

If the data have already been aggregated, then you need to specify stat = "identity" as well as the variable containing the counts as the y aesthetic:

ggplot(agg) + geom_bar(aes(x = Hair, y = n), stat = "identity")

An alternative is to use geom_col.

For aggregated data reordering can be based on the computed counts using

agg_ord <- mutate(agg, Hair = reorder(Hair, -n, sum))
  • -n is used to order largest to smallest;
  • the default summary used by reorder is mean; sum is better here.
ggplot(agg_ord) + geom_col(aes(x = Hair, y = n))

Adding a Grouping Variable

Mapping the Eye variable to fill in ggplot produces a stacked bar chart.

An alternative, specified with position = "dodge", is a side by side bar chart, or a clustered bar chart.

For the side by side chart in particular it may be useful to also reorder the Eye color levels.

ecols <- c(Brown = "brown2", Blue = "blue2",
           Hazel = "darkgoldenrod3", Green = "green4")
agg_ord <- mutate(agg,
                  Hair = reorder(Hair, -n, sum),
                  Eye = reorder(Eye, -n, sum))
p1 <- ggplot(agg_ord) +
    geom_col(aes(x = Hair, y = n, fill = Eye)) +
    scale_fill_manual(values = ecols)
p2 <- ggplot(agg_ord) +
    geom_col(aes(x = Hair, y = n, fill = Eye), position = "dodge") +
    scale_fill_manual(values = ecols)
grid.arrange(p1, p2, nrow = 1)

Faceting can be used to bring in additional variables:

p1 + facet_wrap(~ Sex)

The counts shown here may not be the most relevant features for understanding the joint distributions of these variables.

Pie Charts and Doughnut Charts

Pie charts can be viewed as stacked bar charts in polar coordinates:

hcols <- c(Black = "black", Brown = "brown3",
           Red = "brown1", Blond = "lightgoldenrod1")
p1 <- ggplot(agg_ord) +
    geom_col(aes(x = 1, y = n, fill = Hair), position = "fill") +
    coord_polar(theta = "y") +
    scale_fill_manual(values = hcols)
p2 <- ggplot(agg_ord) +
    geom_col(aes(x = Hair, y = n, fill = Hair)) +
    scale_fill_manual(values = hcols)
grid.arrange(p1, p2, nrow = 1)

The axes and grid lines are not helpful for the pie chart and can be removed with some theme settings.

Using faceting we can also separately show the distributions for men and women:

p3 <- p1 + facet_wrap(~ Sex) +
    theme_bw() +
    theme(axis.title = element_blank(),
          axis.text = element_blank(),
          axis.ticks = element_blank(),
          panel.grid.major = element_blank(),
          panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
          panel.border = element_blank())
p3

Doughnut charts are a variant that has recently become popular in the media:

p4 <- p3 + xlim(0, 1.5)
p4

The center is often used for annotation:

p4 + geom_text(aes(x = 0, y = 0, label = Sex)) +
    theme(strip.background = element_blank(),
          strip.text = element_blank())

Some Notes

Stacked bar charts with equal heights are an alternative for representing part-whole relationhips:

ggplot(agg) +
    geom_col(aes(x = Sex, y = n, fill = Hair), position = "fill") +
    scale_fill_manual(values = hcols)

Another alternative is a waffle chart, sometimes also called a square pie chart.

The waffle package is one R implementation of this idea.

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