Abstract
Visually presenting data and the results of models has become a centerpiece of modern political analysis. Many of Political Science’s top journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, now ask for figures in lieu of tables whenever both can convey the same information. In fact, Kastellec and Leoni (2007) make the case that figures convey empirical results better than tables. Cleveland (1993) and Tufte (2001) wrote two of the leading volumes that describe the elements of good quantitative visualization, and Yau (2011) has produced a more recent take on graphing. Essentially these works serve as style manuals for graphics.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Nebraska and North Carolina are each missing observations of the Ranney index.
- 3.
The default las value is 0, which prints labels parallel to the axis. 1, our choice here, prints them horizontally. 2 prints perpendicular to the axis, and 3 prints them vertically.
- 4.
Alternatively, though, if a user had some time index in the data frame, a similar plot could be produced by typing something to the effect of: pres.energy$Time<-1:180; plot(y=pres.energy$Energy,x=pres.energy$Time,type="l").
- 5.
My personal experience indicates that png often looks pretty clear and is versatile.
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Monogan, J.E. (2015). Visualizing Data. In: Political Analysis Using R. Use R!. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23446-5_3
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