Line chart with error envelop: ggplot2 and geom_ribbon()



This post explains how to add an error envelop around a line chart using ggplot2 and the geom_ribbon() function.

Line chart Section About line chart

Basic line chart with ggplot2 and geom_line()


This graph has been made by Alastair Sanderson. You can have a look to his gallery here.

It shows mean temperature profiles and their error envelopes, using the ggplot2 package and its geom_ribbon() function.

Note that geom_ribbon is used since upper and lower values of the envelop are available in the input data. As an alternative, the geom_smooth function autamatically draw an error envelop using different statistical models.

library(ggplot2)
 
# Get the data from the web !
CC <- read.table("http://www.sr.bham.ac.uk/~ajrs/papers/sanderson06/mean_Tprofile-CC.txt" ,  header=TRUE)
nCC <- read.table("http://www.sr.bham.ac.uk/~ajrs/papers/sanderson06/mean_Tprofile-nCC.txt" , header=TRUE)
CC$type <- "Cool core"
nCC$type <- "Non-cool core"
A <- rbind(CC, nCC)
 
 
# Make the plot
ggplot(data=A, aes(x=r.r500, y=sckT, ymin=sckT.lo, ymax=sckT.up, fill=type, linetype=type)) + 
 geom_line() + 
 geom_ribbon(alpha=0.5) + 
 scale_x_log10() + 
 scale_y_log10() + 
 xlab(as.expression(expression( paste("Radius (", R[500], ")") ))) + 
 ylab("Scaled Temperature")

Related chart types


Line plot
Area
Stacked area
Streamchart
Time Series



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