Connecting R with D3 for dynamic graphics, to explore multivariate data with tours

Abstract

The tourr package in R has several algorithms and displays for showing multivariate data as a sequence of low-dimensional projections. It can display as a movie but has no capacity for interaction, such as stop/go, change tour type, drop/add variables. The tourrGui package provides these sorts of controls, but the interface is programmed with the dated RGtk2 package. This work explores using custom messages to pass data from R to D3 for viewing, using the Shiny framework. This is an approach that can be generally used for creating all sorts of interactive graphics.