R Visualizations: Derive Meaning from Data focuses on one of the two major topics of data analytics: data visualization, a.k.a., computer graphics. In the book, major R systems for visualization are discussed, organized by topic and not by system. Anyone doing data analysis will be shown how to use R to generate any of the basic visualizations with the R visualization systems. Further, this book introduces the author’s lessR system, which always can accomplish a visualization with less coding than the use of other systems, sometimes dramatically so, and also provides accompanying statistical analyses.

Key Features

• Presents thorough coverage of the leading R visualization system, ggplot2.




• Gives specific guidance on using base R graphics to attain visualizations of the same quality as those provided by ggplot2.






• Shows how to create a wide range of data visualizations: distributions of categorical and continuous variables, many types of scatterplots including with a third variable, time series, and maps.


• Inclusion of the various approaches to R graphics organized by topic instead of by system.




• Presents the recent work on interactive visualization in R.

David W. Gerbing received his PhD from Michigan State University in 1979 in quantitative analysis, and currently is a professor of quantitative analysis in the School of Business at Portland State University. He has published extensively in the social and behavioral sciences with a focus on quantitative methods. His lessR package has been in development since 2009.