smplot: An R Package for Easy and Elegant Data Visualization

Abstract

R, a programming language, is an attractive tool for data visualization because it is free and open source. However, learning R can be intimidating and cumbersome for many. In this report, we introduce an R package called “smplot” for easy and elegant data visualization. The R package “smplot” generates graphs with defaults that are visually pleasing and informative. Although it requires basic knowledge of R and ggplot2, it significantly simplifies the process of plotting a bar graph, a violin plot, a correlation plot, a slope chart, a Bland-Altman plot and a raincloud plot. The aesthetics of the plots generated from the package are elegant, highly customisable and adhere to important practices of data visualization. The functions from smplot can be used in a modular fashion, thereby allowing the user to further customise the aesthetics. The smplot package is open source under the MIT license and available on Github (https://github.com/smin95/smplot), where updates will be posted. All the example figures in this report are reproducible and the codes and data are provided for the reader in a separate online guide (https://smin95.github.io/dataviz/).