Radar chart in ggplot2 with ggradar

Package

Author

Ricardo Bion

Sample data set

The ggradar package contains a function of the same name which needs a data frame as input, where the first column is the name of the groups and each column represents a variable. Note that all columns must have the same scale.

set.seed(4)
df <- data.frame(matrix(runif(30), ncol = 10))
df[, 1] <- paste0("G", 1:3)
colnames(df) <- c("Group", paste("Var", 1:9))

Most basic radar chart

Passing your data frame to the ggradar function will create the following visualization. Note that if the values of your columns are not between 0 and 1 you will need to specify the minimum value with grid.min and the maximum value with grid.max.

Basic radar chart

# install.packages("devtools")
# devtools::install_github("ricardo-bion/ggradar")
library(ggradar)

ggradar(df)

Basic radar chart in ggplot2

Radar chart labels

The labels of the grid can be customized with values.radar and the labels of each variable with axis.labels.

Spider chart in ggplot2

# install.packages("devtools")
# devtools::install_github("ricardo-bion/ggradar")
library(ggradar)

ggradar(df, 
        values.radar = c(0, 0.5, 1),
        axis.labels = paste0("A", 1:9))

Radar chart colors and line types

The function provides several arguments to customize the colors, such as background.circle.colour for the background color, group.colours for the colors of the lines and gridline.X.colour to customize the grid lines color, being X min, max or mid.

# install.packages("devtools")
# devtools::install_github("ricardo-bion/ggradar")
library(ggradar)

# Color for the lines
lcols <- c("#EEA236", "#5CB85C", "#46B8DA")

ggradar(df,
        background.circle.colour = "white",
        axis.line.colour = "gray60",
        gridline.min.colour = "gray60",
        gridline.mid.colour = "gray60",
        gridline.max.colour = "gray60",
        group.colours = lcols)

Radar chart color customization in ggplot2

Similarly, the line types of each grid line can be customized with gridline.X.linetype.

# install.packages("devtools")
# devtools::install_github("ricardo-bion/ggradar")
library(ggradar)

# Color for the lines
lcols <- c("#EEA236", "#5CB85C", "#46B8DA")

ggradar(df,
        background.circle.colour = "white",
        gridline.min.linetype = 1,
        gridline.mid.linetype = 1,
        gridline.max.linetype = 1,
        group.colours = lcols)

Radar chart lines customization in ggplot2

Legend

Radar chart legend position in ggplot2

Legend position

It is possible to change the legend position with the legend.position argument and to change the legend title with legend.title.

# install.packages("devtools")
# devtools::install_github("ricardo-bion/ggradar")
library(ggradar)

ggradar(df,
        legend.title = "Group",
        legend.position = "bottom")

ggradar legend in ggplot2

Remove the legend

Finally, if you want to get rid of the legend you can set plot.legend = FALSE or legend.position = "none".

# install.packages("devtools")
# devtools::install_github("ricardo-bion/ggradar")
library(ggradar)

ggradar(df,
        plot.legend = FALSE)

Note that the function provides more arguments to fine tune some details, such as adding custom fonts or changing the text size. Recall to type ?ggradar for further details.