Waffle Style Chart with a Brick Layout in 'ggplot2'.

ggbrick

Create a ‘waffle’ style chart with the aesthetic of a brick wall.

Usage is similar to geom_col where you supply counts as the height of the bar and a fill for a stacked bar. Each whole brick represents 1 unit. Two half bricks equal one whole brick.

Installation

Install from Git

devtools::install_github("doehm/ggbrick")

Simple example

library(ggplot2)
library(ggbrick)

d10 <- c("#788FCE", "#BD8184", "#E6956F", "#F2CC8F", "#A6BA96", "#C5E8E3", 
         "#F4F1DE", "#CDC3D4", "#A88AD2", "#60627C")

mpg |>
  count(class, drv) |>
  ggplot() +
  geom_brick(aes(class, n, fill = drv)) +
  scale_fill_manual(values = d10) +
  coord_brick()

The fill can be randomised to create a different look with type = 'random' or type = 'soft_random'.

In this case each brick represents a car (a row) in mpg. When the number of bricks gets too large, the number of brick layers will be capped and the number of bricks will be scaled down. The proportions of the fill aesthetic will be held consistent. This can be adjusted with the brick_layers parameter.

mpg |>
  count(class, trans) |>
  mutate(n = 5*n) |>
  ggplot() +
  geom_brick(aes(class, n, fill = trans)) +
  scale_fill_manual(values = d10) +
  coord_brick()

You can also adjust the number of bricks per layer with the bricks_per_layer parameter.

ggplot() +
  geom_brick(aes(x = 1, y = 96), fill = "firebrick", bricks_per_layer = 8)

You can control with width with width. To keep the right aspect ratio also use coord_brick(width = 0.5)

mpg |>
  count(class, drv) |>
  ggplot() +
  geom_brick0(aes(class, n, fill = drv), width = 0.5) +
  coord_brick(width = 0.5) +
  scale_fill_manual(values = d10)

Waffle

To create a more familiar waffle chart you can use geom_waffle0() and geom_waffle(). geom_waffle0() is just geom_waffle() with gap = 0.

mpg |>
  count(class, drv) |>
  ggplot() +
  geom_waffle0(aes(class, n, fill = drv))+
  coord_waffle() +
  scale_fill_manual(values = d10)

mpg |>
  count(class, drv) |>
  ggplot() +
  geom_waffle(aes(class, n, fill = drv), gap = 0.02)+
  coord_waffle() +
  scale_fill_manual(values = d10)

To flip the coords you’ll have to use theme(aspect.ratio = x) to maintain the brick aspect ratio (square in the case of waffle)

mpg |>
  count(class, drv) |>
  ggplot() +
  geom_waffle0(aes(class, n, fill = drv)) +
  scale_fill_manual(values = d10) +
  coord_flip() +
  theme(
    aspect.ratio = 2
  )