Dispersion graph with marginal histograms

Question

I wonder if there is a way to make a chart similar to this in the R:

It is possible to make a dispersion Plot and to the side or below, as it presents the image, place the histogram representing the data?

Answer 1

Yeah, there’s a way.

In the background it is only a matter of tidying the layout of the graphics on the screen. If you access the help of the function layout (?layout), there is an example of a scattering graph with marginal histograms (last help example):

x <- pmin(3, pmax(-3, stats::rnorm(50)))
y <- pmin(3, pmax(-3, stats::rnorm(50)))
xhist <- hist(x, breaks = seq(-3,3,0.5), plot = FALSE)
yhist <- hist(y, breaks = seq(-3,3,0.5), plot = FALSE)
top <- max(c(xhist$counts, yhist$counts))
xrange <- c(-3, 3)
yrange <- c(-3, 3)
nf <- layout(matrix(c(2,0,1,3),2,2,byrow = TRUE), c(3,1), c(1,3), TRUE)
layout.show(nf)

par(mar = c(3,3,1,1))
plot(x, y, xlim = xrange, ylim = yrange, xlab = "", ylab = "")
par(mar = c(0,3,1,1))
barplot(xhist$counts, axes = FALSE, ylim = c(0, top), space = 0)
par(mar = c(3,0,1,1))
barplot(yhist$counts, axes = FALSE, xlim = c(0, top), space = 0, horiz = TRUE)

par(def.par)  #- reset to default

Ideally you create a function based on the above code. You have a package in R with a function virtually equal to this code:

install.packages("UsingR")
library(UsingR)
simple.scatterplot(x,y)

These examples are with the base charts. You can also do this with the ggplot2, as per tips of this question by Soen. To arrange ggplot charts, you can use the grid.arrange, as examples of this question.

An example with ggplot2:

df <- data.frame(x, y)

library(ggplot2)
adj <- theme(legend.position = "none",          
             axis.title.x = element_blank(),
             axis.title.y = element_blank(),
             axis.text.x = element_blank(),
             axis.text.y = element_blank())

hist_top <- ggplot(df, aes(x)) + geom_histogram() + theme_bw() + adj 
hist_right <- ggplot(df, aes(y)) + geom_histogram()+coord_flip() + theme_bw() + adj 
scatter <- ggplot(df, aes(x, y))+geom_point() + theme_bw()

empty <- ggplot()+geom_point(aes(1,1), colour="white")+
  theme(axis.ticks=element_blank(), 
        panel.background=element_blank(), 
        axis.text.x=element_blank(), axis.text.y=element_blank(),           
        axis.title.x=element_blank(), axis.title.y=element_blank())

library(gridExtra)
grid.arrange(hist_top, empty, scatter, hist_right, ncol=2, nrow=2, widths=c(4, 1), heights=c(1, 4))