hadley / ggplot2-book

ggplot2: elegant graphics for data analysis
https://ggplot2-book.org/
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Conceptual facet discussion #258

Open cmaimone opened 3 years ago

cmaimone commented 3 years ago

We've been having a conceptual discussion in a data visualization course about facets -- whether plots like the economic time series in this section https://ggplot2-book.org/facet.html#controlling-scales (where the y axes are representing different measures, but the x axis is a shared time interval) are really the same as some of the other examples in the chapter where the same measure or variable is on both the x and y scale (conceptual measure or variable, separate from the long or wide format of the data).

While you can make plots such as the economic time series in section https://ggplot2-book.org/facet.html#controlling-scales with the facet functions, in my view at least, they are fundamentally different than the "small multiples" for groups where the same plot is made for different groups in the data.

It would be helpful in the facets chapter to discuss these differences. If both types of plots (all with the same x/y mappings vs. one of those different) are faceted plots (conceptually, vs. what you can make happen with the functions and shaping your data in particular ways), maybe a different term is needed for plots where each facet is conceptually a group in the original data vs. the other cases?