Case Study: Animation and Others Vizs
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This post will be about if we can show some data in other ways to try to tell more clearly the Oh! Foo! is this rly happening? story.
Time time ago an gif appears showing the change of the global temperatures over time.
Well, some sites like http://gizmodo.com/ made a reference to this animation as one-of-the-most-convincing-climate-change-visualization. Mmmm… ok! A kind of click bait IMHO but at least the title saids visualization :B. But for me the animation don’t work always. I rembember a quote, sadly I don’t rember the author, maybe/surely was Alberto Cairo (If you know it please tell me who was):
Animation force the user to compare what they see with what they remember (saw).
If you want it in Yoda’s way:
Other thing I don’t like so much about this spiral is there’are so much data overlaped at the end of animation hiding information about the speed of increment in the data.
Data & Packages
We’ll use the data provide by hrbrmstr in his
repo.
Bob Rudis made a beautiful representation of the data via ggplot2 and D3 using a
geom_segment/column range viz.
About the packages. Here we’ll use a lot of dplyr, tidyr, purrr for the data manipulation,
for the colors we’ll use viridis, lastly I’ll use highcharter
for charts
library("highcharter")
library("readr")
library("dplyr")
library("tidyr")
library("lubridate")
library("purrr")
library("viridis")
options(
highcharter.theme = hc_theme_darkunica(
chart = list(
style = list(fontFamily = "Roboto Condensed"),
backgroundColor = "#323331"
),
yAxis = list(
gridLineColor = "#B71C1C",
labels = list(format = "{value} C", useHTML = TRUE)
),
plotOptions = list(series = list(showInLegend = FALSE))
)
)
df <- read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hrbrmstr/hadcrut/master/data/temps.csv")
df <- df %>%
mutate(date = ymd(year_mon),
tmpstmp = datetime_to_timestamp(date),
year = year(date),
month = month(date, label = TRUE),
color_m = colorize(median, viridis(10, option = "B")),
color_m = hex_to_rgba(color_m, 0.65))
dfcolyrs <- df %>%
group_by(year) %>%
summarise(median = median(median)) %>%
ungroup() %>%
mutate(color_y = colorize(median, viridis(10, option = "B")),
color_y = hex_to_rgba(color_y, 0.65)) %>%
select(-median)
df <- left_join(df, dfcolyrs, by = "year")
The data is ready, let’s go.
| year_mon | median | lower | upper | year | decade | month | date | tmpstmp | color_m | color_y |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1850-01-01 | -0.702 | -1.102 | -0.299 | 1850 | 1850 | Jan | 1850-01-01 | -3.79e+12 | rgba(2,1,10,0.65) | rgba(87,16,107,0.65) |
| 1850-02-01 | -0.284 | -0.675 | 0.114 | 1850 | 1850 | Feb | 1850-02-01 | -3.78e+12 | rgba(107,23,108,0.65) | rgba(87,16,107,0.65) |
| 1850-03-01 | -0.732 | -1.080 | -0.383 | 1850 | 1850 | Mar | 1850-03-01 | -3.78e+12 | rgba(1,0,8,0.65) | rgba(87,16,107,0.65) |
| 1850-04-01 | -0.570 | -0.903 | -0.237 | 1850 | 1850 | Apr | 1850-04-01 | -3.78e+12 | rgba(9,4,26,0.65) | rgba(87,16,107,0.65) |
| 1850-05-01 | -0.325 | -0.662 | 0.006 | 1850 | 1850 | May | 1850-05-01 | -3.78e+12 | rgba(84,15,107,0.65) | rgba(87,16,107,0.65) |
| 1850-06-01 | -0.213 | -0.515 | 0.084 | 1850 | 1850 | Jun | 1850-06-01 | -3.77e+12 | rgba(148,38,100,0.65) | rgba(87,16,107,0.65) |
Spiral
First of all let’s try to replicate the chart/gif/animation that’s reason
to write this post. Here we’ll construtct a list of series to use
with hc_add_series_list function.
lsseries <- df %>%
group_by(year) %>%
do(
data = .$median,
color = first(.$color_y)) %>%
mutate(name = year) %>%
list.parse3()
hc1 <- highchart() %>%
hc_chart(polar = TRUE) %>%
hc_plotOptions(
series = list(
marker = list(enabled = FALSE),
animation = TRUE,
pointIntervalUnit = "month")
) %>%
hc_legend(enabled = FALSE) %>%
hc_xAxis(type = "datetime", min = 0, max = 365 * 24 * 36e5,
labels = list(format = "{value:%B}")) %>%
hc_tooltip(headerFormat = "{point.key}",
xDateFormat = "%B",
pointFormat = " {series.name}: {point.y}") %>%
hc_add_series_list(lsseries)
hc1
Ok! without the animation componet this don’t work so much.
If we want replicate the animation part we can hide all the series using transparency.
lsseries2 <- df %>%
group_by(year) %>%
do(
data = .$median,
color = "transparent",
enableMouseTracking = FALSE,
color2 = first(.$color_y)) %>%
mutate(name = year) %>%
list.parse3()
Then using a little of javascript we can color each series one by one with the real color.
hc11 <- highchart() %>%
hc_chart(polar = TRUE) %>%
hc_plotOptions(series = list(
marker = list(enabled = FALSE),
animation = TRUE,
pointIntervalUnit = "month")) %>%
hc_legend(enabled = FALSE) %>%
hc_title(text = "Animated Spiral") %>%
hc_xAxis(type = "datetime", min = 0, max = 365 * 24 * 36e5,
labels = list(format = "{value:%B}")) %>%
hc_tooltip(headerFormat = "{point.key}", xDateFormat = "%B",
pointFormat = " {series.name}: {point.y}") %>%
hc_add_series_list(lsseries2) %>%
hc_chart(
events = list(
load = JS("
function() {
console.log('ready');
var duration = 16 * 1000
var delta = duration/this.series.length;
var delay = 2000;
this.series.map(function(e){
setTimeout(function() {
e.update({color: e.options.color2, enableMouseTracking: true});
e.chart.setTitle({text: e.name})
}, delay)
delay = delay + delta;
});
}
")
)
)
And voila.
hc11
You can open the chart in a new window to see the animation effect.
Sesonalplot
We need polar coords here? I don’t know so let’s back to the euclidean space and see what happened
hc2 <- hc1 %>%
hc_chart(polar = FALSE, type = "spline") %>%
hc_xAxis(max = (365 - 1) * 24 * 36e5) %>%
hc_yAxis(tickPositions = c(-1.5, 0, 1.5, 2))
hc2
Nom! A nice colored spaghettis. Not so much clear what happened across the years.
Heatmap
Here we put the years in xAxis and month in yAxis:
m <- df %>%
select(year, month, median) %>%
spread(year, median) %>%
select(-month) %>%
as.matrix()
rownames(m) <- month.abb
hc3 <- hchart(m) %>%
hc_colorAxis(
stops = color_stops(10, viridis(10, option = "B")),
min = -1, max = 1
) %>%
hc_yAxis(
title = list(text = NULL),
tickPositions = FALSE,
labels = list(format = "{value}", useHTML = TRUE)
)
hc3
With the color scale used is not that clear the impact about the incremet. We can see the series have and increase but with colors is not so easy to quantify that change.
Line / Time Series
Let’s try now the most simply chart. And let’s represent the data as a time series.
dsts <- df %>%
mutate(name = paste(decade, month)) %>%
select(x = tmpstmp, y = median, name)
hc4 <- highchart() %>%
hc_xAxis(type = "datetime") %>%
hc_yAxis(tickPositions = c(-1.5, 0, 1.5, 2)) %>%
hc_add_series_df(dsts, name = "Global Temperature",
type = "line", color = hex_to_rgba(viridis(10, option = "B")[7]),
lineWidth = 1,
states = list(hover = list(lineWidth = 1)),
shadow = FALSE)
hc4
maybe it’s so simple. What do you think?
Columrange
Finally let’s add the information about the confidence interval and add the media information using a color same as hrbrmstr did.
With highcharter it’s easy. Just define the dataframe with x,
low, high and color and add it to a highchart object
with the hc_add_series_df function.
dscr <- df %>%
mutate(name = paste(decade, month)) %>%
select(x = tmpstmp, low = lower, high = upper, name, color = color_m)
hc5 <- highchart() %>%
hc_yAxis(tickPositions = c(-2, 0, 1.5, 2)) %>%
hc_xAxis(type = "datetime") %>%
hc_add_series_df(dscr, name = "Global Temperature",
type = "columnrange")
hc5
(IMHO) This is a really way to show what we want to say:
- Via a time series chart it’s wasy compare the past with the actual period of time.
- The color, in particular the last yellowish part, add importance and guide our eyes to that part of the chart before to start to compare.
Do you have other ways to represent this data?
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