Chapter 11 Dumbell Plot

Dumbell plot, or Dumbell Chart, is an efficient tool to display the change of the variable between two different time points, two conditions or the differences between two groups.

Rather than the most of the ggplot objects, you should manipulate your dataset to make a dumbell plot. In addition to ggplot2, we also use ggalt package for it.

Consider uspopchange data from gcookbook package.

uspopchange <- gcookbook::uspopchange

min_change = aggregate(Change~Region,data=uspopchange,min)
max_change = aggregate(Change~Region,data=uspopchange,max)
dumbell_data=cbind(min_change,max_change)
dumbell_data

##          Region Change        Region Change
## 1     Northeast    0.4     Northeast    6.5
## 2         South    1.4         South   20.6
## 3 North Central   -0.6 North Central    7.9
## 4          West    9.7          West   35.1

dumbell_data = dumbell_data[,-3]
colnames(dumbell_data) = c("region","min","max")
dumbell_data

##          region  min  max
## 1     Northeast  0.4  6.5
## 2         South  1.4 20.6
## 3 North Central -0.6  7.9
## 4          West  9.7 35.1

This is how your data looks like.

library(ggalt)

ggplot(dumbell_data, aes(y=region, x= min, xend=max)) + 
  geom_dumbbell(size=2, color="black", 
                colour_x = "gold1", colour_xend = "darkred",
                dot_guide=TRUE, dot_guide_size=0.1)