Available circular chart types with circlize



The circlize package allows to build circular charts with R. Several chart types are offered: bar, scatter, line, abline and more. This post shows how to build them.

Chord section Data to Viz

Circular Scatterplot


Circular scatterplot has already been extensively described in chart #224 and #225.

Here is a reminder:

# Upload library
library(circlize)
circos.par("track.height" = 0.4)

# Create data
data = data.frame(
    factor = sample(letters[1:8], 1000, replace = TRUE),
    x = rnorm(1000),
    y = runif(1000)
    )

# Step1: Initialise the chart giving factor and x-axis.
circos.initialize( factors=data$factor, x=data$x )

# Step 2: Build the regions.
circos.trackPlotRegion(factors = data$factor, y = data$y, panel.fun = function(x, y) {
    circos.axis()
    })

# Step 3: Add points
circos.trackPoints(data$factor, data$x, data$y, col="#69b3a2")

Circular Line chart


It is possible to switch to line chart using the circos.trackLines() function. Visit the line chart section of the gallery to learn how to customize that kind of chart.

# Upload library
library(circlize)
circos.par("track.height" = 0.4)

# Create data
data = data.frame(
    factor = sample(letters[1:8], 1000, replace = TRUE),
    x = rnorm(1000),
    y = runif(1000)
    )

# Step1: Initialise the chart giving factor and x-axis.
circos.initialize( factors=data$factor, x=data$x )

# Step 2: Build the regions.
circos.trackPlotRegion(factors = data$factor, y = data$y, panel.fun = function(x, y) {
    circos.axis()
    })

# Step 3: Add points
circos.trackLines(data$factor, data$x[order(data$x)], data$y[order(data$x)], col = rgb(0.1,0.5,0.8,0.3), lwd=2)

Vertical ablines


The circos.trackLines() function can also be used to display vertical ablines.

# Upload library
library(circlize)
circos.par("track.height" = 0.4)

# Create data
data = data.frame(
    factor = sample(letters[1:8], 1000, replace = TRUE),
    x = rnorm(1000),
    y = runif(1000)
    )

# Step1: Initialise the chart giving factor and x-axis.
circos.initialize( factors=data$factor, x=data$x )

# Step 2: Build the regions.
circos.trackPlotRegion(factors = data$factor, y = data$y, panel.fun = function(x, y) {
    circos.axis()
    })

# Step 3: Add points
circos.trackLines(data$factor, data$x[order(data$x)], data$y[order(data$x)], col = rgb(0.1,0.5,0.8,0.3), lwd=2, type="h")

Circular histogram


Note that each plot type must be coherent with what you specified in the circos.trackPlotRegion function.

You have to specify an Y axis for a scatterplot as seen before. But not for a histogram that is built with circos.trackHist().

# Upload library
library(circlize)
circos.par("track.height" = 0.4)

# Create data
data = data.frame(
    factor = sample(letters[1:8], 1000, replace = TRUE),
    x = rnorm(1000),
    y = runif(1000)
    )

# Step1: Initialise the chart giving factor and x-axis.
circos.initialize( factors=data$factor, x=data$x )

circos.trackHist(data$factor, data$x, bg.col = "white", col = "#69b3a2")

Related chart types


Chord diagram
Network
Sankey
Arc diagram
Edge bundling



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