gghistostats

Indrajeet Patil

2018-08-14

The function ggstatsplot::gghistostats can be used during data exploration phase and is also meant to provide an easy way to make publication-ready histogram with all statistical details included in the plot itself. We will see examples of how to use this function in this vignette with the gapminder dataset.

To begin with, here are some instances where you would want to use gghistostats-

Note before: The following demo uses the pipe operator (%>%), so in case you are not familiar with this operator, here is a good explanation: http://r4ds.had.co.nz/pipes.html

Distribution with gghistostats

To illustrate how this function can be used, we will use the gapminder dataset. This dataset (available in eponymous package on CRAN) provides values for life expectancy, GDP per capita, and population, every five years, from 1952 to 2007, for each of 142 countries and was collected by the Gapminder Foundation. Let’s have a look at the data-

library(gapminder)
library(dplyr)

dplyr::glimpse(x = gapminder::gapminder)
#> Observations: 1,704
#> Variables: 6
#> $ country   <fct> Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan, ...
#> $ continent <fct> Asia, Asia, Asia, Asia, Asia, Asia, Asia, Asia, Asia...
#> $ year      <int> 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992...
#> $ lifeExp   <dbl> 28.801, 30.332, 31.997, 34.020, 36.088, 38.438, 39.8...
#> $ pop       <int> 8425333, 9240934, 10267083, 11537966, 13079460, 1488...
#> $ gdpPercap <dbl> 779.4453, 820.8530, 853.1007, 836.1971, 739.9811, 78...

Suppose the first thing we want to check is the distribution of population worldwide in 2007. In this case, we are not interested in any statistics and, therefore, can set the results.subtitle argument to FALSE.

library(ggstatsplot)

gapminder::gapminder %>%
  dplyr::filter(.data = ., year == 2007) %>%            # select data only from the year 2007
  ggstatsplot::gghistostats(
    data = .,                                           # data from which variable is to be taken
    x = pop,                                            # numeric variable
    results.subtitle = FALSE,                           # don't run statistical tests
    messages = FALSE,                                   # turn off messages
    xlab = "Population",                                # x-axis label
    title = "Distribution of population worldwide",     # title for the plot
    subtitle = "Year: 2007",                            # subtitle for the plot
    caption = "Data courtesy of: Gapminder Foundation"  # caption for the plot
  )

Although this plot is useful, it is still not satisfactory as most of the mass seems to be concentrated at 0 due to the large range of numbers. We can remedy this by converting population to logarithmic scale. We can additionally adjust binwidth so that we have bins for every increase in order of magnitude.

gapminder::gapminder %>%
  dplyr::filter(.data = ., year == 2007) %>%            # select data only from the year 2007
  dplyr::mutate(.data = ., pop_log = log10(pop)) %>%    # creating new population variable
  ggstatsplot::gghistostats(
    data = .,                                           # data from which variable is to be taken
    x = pop_log,                                        # numeric variable
    results.subtitle = FALSE,                           # don't run statistical tests
    messages = FALSE,                                   # turn off messages
    xlab = "Population (logarithmic)",                  # x-axis label
    title = "Distribution of population worldwide",     # title for the plot
    subtitle = "Year: 2007",                            # subtitle for the plot
    caption = "Data courtesy of: Gapminder Foundation", # caption for the plot
    binwidth = 1                                        # new binwidth
  )

So far we have been showing the count information with the bar chart. Another option included is density. Showing count gives an idea about raw counts, while density gives information about proportional prevalence of values in a certain range.

For example,

gapminder::gapminder %>%
  dplyr::filter(.data = ., year == 2007) %>%            # select data only from the year 2007
  dplyr::mutate(.data = ., pop_log = log10(pop)) %>%    # creating new population variable
  ggstatsplot::gghistostats(
    data = .,                                           # data from which variable is to be taken
    x = pop_log,                                        # numeric variable
    bar.measure = "density",                            # bar height measure
    results.subtitle = FALSE,                           # don't run statistical tests
    messages = FALSE,                                   # turn off messages
    xlab = "Population (logarithmic)",                  # x-axis label
    title = "Distribution of population worldwide",     # title for the plot
    subtitle = "Year: 2007",                            # subtitle for the plot
    caption = "Data courtesy of: Gapminder Foundation", # caption for the plot
    binwidth = 1,                                       # new binwidth
    low.color = "#009E73",                              # color for the lower end of the colorbar
    high.color = "#F0E442"                              # color for the upper end of the colorbar
  )

And yet another option is to show relative frequencies that denote percentage "proportion" of the total observations that fall in a given bin.

gapminder::gapminder %>%
  dplyr::filter(.data = ., year == 2007) %>%            
  ggstatsplot::gghistostats(
    data = .,                                           # data from which variable is to be taken
    x = lifeExp,                                        # numeric variable
    bar.measure = "proportion",                         # bar height measure
    results.subtitle = FALSE,                           # don't run statistical tests
    messages = FALSE,                                   # turn off messages
    xlab = "Life expectancy",                           # x-axis label
    title = "Distribution of life expectancy",          # title for the plot
    subtitle = "Year: 2007",                            # subtitle for the plot
    caption = "Data courtesy of: Gapminder Foundation", # caption for the plot
    binwidth = 5,                                       # new binwidth
    low.color = "#009E73",                              # color for the lower end of the colorbar
    high.color = "#F0E442"                              # color for the upper end of the colorbar
  )

This shows the utility of gghistostats in case of data exploration.

Statistical analysis with gghistostats

Let’s say we are now interested in investigating whether the mean life expectancy in 2007 across the world has improved during the 20th-Century. In 1950, it was 48, so this is the test.value we are going to use.

gapminder::gapminder %>%
  dplyr::filter(.data = ., year == 2007) %>%            # select data only from the year 2007
  ggstatsplot::gghistostats(
    data = .,                                           # data from which variable is to be taken
    x = lifeExp,                                        # numeric variable
    messages = FALSE,                                   # turn off messages
    test.value = 48,                                    # test value against which sample mean is to be compared
    xlab = "Life expectancy",                           # x-axis label
    title = "Life expectancy worldwide",                # title for the plot
    subtitle = "Year: 2007",                            # subtitle for the plot
    caption = "Data courtesy of: Gapminder Foundation", # caption for the plot
    centrality.para = "mean",                           # plotting centrality parameter (mean)
    ggtheme = ggplot2::theme_grey(),                    # change the default theme
    fill.gradient = FALSE                               # turn off color fill gradient
  )

Although there are still some countries where the life expectancy is low, on average, the life expectancy worldwide has improved compared to what it was in 1950.

gghistostats also provides the opportunity to compute Bayes Factors to quantify evidence in favor of the alternative (BF10) or the null hypothesis (BF01). In practice, you need to compute only one and the other will just be the inverse. In the current example, let’s say we want to quantify evidence in favor of the alternative hypothesis (H1) that the life expectancy in 2007 has improved significantly worldwide since 1957. The null, in this case, will of course be that there is no improvement.

gapminder::gapminder %>%
  dplyr::filter(.data = ., year == 2007) %>%
  ggstatsplot::gghistostats(
    data = .,                                              # data from which variable is to be taken
    x = lifeExp,                                           # numeric variable
    messages = FALSE,                                      # turn off messages
    type = "bf",                                           # bayesian one sample t-test
    test.value = 48,                                       # test value 
    xlab = "Life expectancy",                              # x-axis label
    title = "Life expectancy worldwide",                   # title for the plot
    subtitle = "Year: 2007",                               # subtitle for the plot
    caption = "Note: black line - 1950; blue line - 2007", # caption for the plot
    test.value.line = TRUE,                                # show a vertical line at `test.value`
    centrality.para = "mean"                               # plotting centrality parameter (mean)
  )

As this analysis shows, Bayes Factor value provides conclusive evidence in favor of the alternative hypothesis: Life expectancy worldwide has improved significantly since 1957.

Grouped analysis with grouped_gghistostats

What if we want to do the same analysis separately for all five continents? In that case, we will have to either write a for loop or use purrr, none of which seem like an exciting prospect.

ggstatsplot provides a special helper function for such instances: grouped_gghistostats. This is merely a wrapper function around ggstatsplot::combine_plots. It applies gghistostats across all levels of a specified grouping variable and then combines list of individual plots into a single plot. Note that the grouping variable can be anything: conditions in a given study, groups in a study sample, different studies, etc.

Let’s see how we can use this function to apply gghistostats for all five continents. We will be running parametric tests (one sample t-test, i.e.). If you set type = "np", results from non-parametric test will be displayed.

gapminder::gapminder %>%                        # select data only for the year 2007
  dplyr::filter(.data = ., year == 2007) %>%
ggstatsplot::grouped_gghistostats(
  # arguments relevant for ggstatsplot::gghistostats
  data = .,                                     # `.` is placeholder for data plugged by %>%
  x = lifeExp,
  xlab = "Life expectancy",
  title.prefix = "Continent",                   # prefix for the fixed title
  type = "robust",                              # robust test: one-sample percentile bootstrap
  robust.estimator = "mom",                     # the modified one-step M-estimator of location
  test.value = 48,                              # test value against which sample mean is to be compared
  test.value.line = TRUE,                       # show a vertical line at `test.value`
  messages = FALSE,                             # turn off messages
  centrality.para = "mean",                     # plotting centrality parameter (mean)
  grouping.var = continent,                     # grouping variable with multiple levels
  # arguments relevant for ggstatsplot::combine_plots
  title.text = "Life expectancy change in different continents since 1950",
  caption.text = "Note: black line - 1950; blue line - 2007",
  nrow = 3,
  ncol = 2,
  labels = c("(a)","(b)","(c)","(d)","(e)")
)

As can be seen from these plots, life expectancy has improved in all continents in 2007 as compared to the global average of 1950. Additionally, we see the benefits of plotting this data separately for each continent. If we look at the standardized effect sizes (Cohen’s d), it is apparent that the biggest improvements in life expectancy outcomes were seen on the continents of Europe, Americas, and Oceania (just one data point is available here), while Asia and Africa exhibit the lowest improvements.

Although this is a quick and dirty way to explore large amount of data with minimal effort, it does come with an important limitation: reduced flexibility. For example, if we wanted to add, let’s say, a separate test.value argument for each continent, this is not possible with grouped_gghistostats. For cases like these, it would be better to use (e.g.).

Grouped analysis with gghistostats + purrr

So far we have been comparing life expectancy in 2007 for a particular continent to the global average from 1957. But what if we want to compare to continent-specific life expectancy from 1957 (https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy), or run separate kinds of tests (robust for some, parametric for other, while Bayesian for some other levels of the group). This is not possible grouped_gghistostats function, but can be easily achieved with purrr package from tidyverse.

Note before: Unlike the function call so far, while using purrr::pmap, we will need to quote the arguments.

# let's split the dataframe and create a list by continent
continent_list <- gapminder::gapminder %>%
  dplyr::filter(.data = ., year == 2007) %>%
  base::split(x = ., f = .$continent, drop = TRUE)

# this created a list with 5 elements, one for each continent
# you can check the structure of the file for yourself
# str(continent_list)

# checking the length and names of each element
length(continent_list)
#> [1] 5
names(continent_list)
#> [1] "Africa"   "Americas" "Asia"     "Europe"   "Oceania"

# running function on every element of this list note that if you want the same
# value for a given argument across all elements of the list, you need to
# specify it just once
plot_list <- purrr::pmap(
  .l = list(
    data = continent_list,
    x = "lifeExp",
    xlab = "Life expectancy",
    test.value = list(35.6, 58.4, 41.6, 64.7, 63.4),
    type = list("p", "np", "r", "np", "p"),
    title = list(
      "Continent: Africa",
      "Continent: Americas",
      "Continent: Asia",
      "Continent: Europe",
      "Continent: Oceania"
    ),
    messages = FALSE,
    test.value.line = TRUE,
    test.value.color = "black",
    centrality.para = "mean",
    centrality.color = "blue",
    low.color = list("#56B4E9", "#009E73", "#999999", "#0072B2", "#D55E00"),
    high.color = list("#D55E00", "#CC79A7", "#F0E442", "#D55E00", "#56B4E9"),
    ggtheme = list(
      ggplot2::theme_grey(),
      ggplot2::theme_classic(),
      ggplot2::theme_light(),
      ggplot2::theme_minimal(),
      ggplot2::theme_bw()
    )
  ),
  .f = ggstatsplot::gghistostats
)
  
# combining all individual plots from the list into a single plot using combine_plots function
ggstatsplot::combine_plots(
  plotlist = plot_list,
  title.text = "Improvement in life expectancy worldwide since 1950",
  caption.text = "Note: black line - 1950; blue line - 2007",
  nrow = 3,
  ncol = 2,
  labels = c("(a)", "(b)", "(c)", "(d)", "(e)")
)

This shows a much more detailed account of changes in life expectancy as compared to the previous plot. Compared to their respective average life expectancies in 1950’s, the continent that has had the highest improvement is Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), while the continent with the least improvement is Africa (as seen by Cohen’s d values). This again shows the ease with which publication-ready plots or plots for exploratory data analysis can be prepared if ggstatsplot is coupled with a functional programming package like purrr.

Suggestions

If you find any bugs or have any suggestions/remarks, please file an issue on GitHub: https://github.com/IndrajeetPatil/ggstatsplot/issues