Violin plots in ggplot2

Use geom_violin() to quickly plot a visual summary of variables, using the Boston dataset from the MASS library.

1. Upload the relevant libraries:

require(tidyr)
require(ggplot2)
require(RColorBrewer)
require(randomcoloR)
require(MASS)

2. Load data and use the tidyr package to transform wide into long format:

data(Boston)
dt.long <- gather(Boston, "variable",
"value", crim:medv)

3. Create some color palettes:

col <- colorRampPalette(c("red", "blue"))(14)
# col.bp <- brewer.pal(9, "Set1") # brewer.pal only has a max of 9 colors
col.rc <- as.vector(distinctColorPalette(14))

4. Plot(s):

• With the standard colors produced by ggplot2:

ggplot(dt.long,aes(factor(variable), value))+
geom_violin(aes(fill=factor(variable)))+
geom_boxplot(alpha=0.3, color="black", width=.1)+
labs(x = "", y = "")+
theme_bw()+
theme(legend.title = element_blank())+
facet_wrap(~variable, scales="free")

• With the color palette produced by colorRampPalette:

ggplot(dt.long,aes(factor(variable), value))+
geom_violin(aes(fill=factor(variable)))+
geom_boxplot(alpha=0.3, color="black", width=.1)+
labs(x = "", y = "")+
scale_fill_manual(values = col, name="")+
theme_bw()+
facet_wrap(~variable, scales="free")

• With the color palette produced by randomcoloR library:

ggplot(dt.long,aes(factor(variable), value))+
geom_violin(aes(fill=factor(variable)))+
geom_boxplot(alpha=0.3, color="black", width=.1)+
labs(x = "", y = "")+
scale_fill_manual(values = col.rc, name="")+
theme_bw()+
facet_wrap(~variable, scales="free")