geom_ribbon


Ribbon plot. Each x value is related with one ymax and ymin value.

Aesthetics

x, ymin, ymax required position aesthetics
alpha, colour, fill, group, line type, size classic aesthetics properties

Other Properties

This geometry does not contain other properties.

Similar Geometries

geom_area, geom_line, geom_step

Description and Details

Using the described geometry, you can insert a simple geometric object into your data visualization – ribbon that is defined by positional aesthetic properties x, ymin and ymax. You can find this geometry in the ribbon toolbar tab Layers, under the Primitives button.

geom_ribbon geometry is often used to display a range of values along a continual values on X axis – for example, a range of measurement errors. Its position is defined by the parameters x, ymin and ymax. The example shows the following picture. Described geometry is not bounded at the bottom by a zero values, like the geom_area geometry.

You can map variables from the dataset directly to ymin and ymax properties. The second option is to map both parameters to one variable that will be adjusted – for example, you add (for ymax) and subtract (for ymin) selected constant values.

You can also modify geom_ribbon to look like geom_area geometry. You map dataset variable to the ymax parameter and define ymin as a constant numeric value.

As with other geometries, you can define a number of aesthetic properties. In the following picture, we changed the background color and color of border lines, line type and thickness. In addition, we added the second geom_line geometry.

If we insert geom_ribbon into the data visualization, we mostly map its position parameters to variables from imported dataset. However, these position parameters can also be defined using R functions. In this case, we leave the data parameter blank and the positional parameters (x, ymin and ymax) are defined as functions. In the following example, we defined x parameter by a function – 1:50 that generates numerical vector ranging from 1 to 50 in step 1. Subsequently, it is necessary to create functions for the ymin and ymax parameters, resulting in a numerical vector with the same number of values. We also created a numerical vector using function 1:50 and these values were transformed using sin and cos functions and shifted using constant values. The result is shown in the following picture.

The geom_ribbon geometry is useful if we display a range of values along a continuous X axis. Similar geometry is geom_area, but we display only one variable (ymax) on the Y axis and the ymin values are fixed to 0. Similarly, we define the positional characteristics for geom_line and geom_step geometries.