Background
R
is amazing, but daunting
for many. The programming style of R, compared to the point-and-click
style of typical software, is a hurdle for many. Perhaps particularly so
for those in the social sciences, whose statistical needs are often met by
other software packages. Yet such packages are often very limited in terms
of their options to visualize the data at hand. I believe that the amazing
visualization-capabilities of R might be one way to get more people to use it.
To lower the barrier to start using R, this package allows users to visualize
their data using an online graphical user interface (GUI) that makes use of
R's visualization package
ggplot
. There are two ways of using this functionality: 1) online, where users
can upload their data and visualize it without needing R, by visiting
this website
; 2) from within the R-environment (by using the
ggplot_shiny()
function). Importantly, the R-code will also be provided such that the user
can recreate the graphs within the R-environment. The main aim (or hope) is
to get more people using R and its wonderful (graphing) capabilities.
App info
This application was built in R version 3.3.2, and uses the following packages: ggplot2 , Shiny , stringr , plotly , readr , readxl , haven , and RColorBrewer.
This application was created by Gert Stulp . Please do report bugs and send feature requests to g.stulp[at]rug.nl . Visit https://github.com/gertstulp/ggplotgui for further description and code.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Wilmer Joling for setting up the website which is based on the magical but incomprehensible docker . Thanks to Hadley Wickham for making such good packages (and open access books describing them), that allow even low-skilled and low-talented programmers like myself to be able to contribute to R