# How to Plot a Smooth Line using GGPlot2

#### How to Plot a Smooth Line using GGPlot2

You will learn how to plot smooth line using ggplot2.

Contents:

#### Related Book

GGPlot2 Essentials for Great Data Visualization in R

## Prerequisites

• Load the ggplot2 package and set the default theme to theme_minimal():
library(ggplot2)
theme_set(
theme_bw() +
theme(legend.position = "top")
)
• Demo dataset:
head(cars)
##   speed dist
## 1     4    2
## 2     4   10
## 3     7    4
## 4     7   22
## 5     8   16
## 6     9   10

## Key R function: geom_smooth()

• Key R function: geom_smooth() for adding smoothed conditional means / regression line.
• Key arguments:
• color, size and linetype: Change the line color, size and type.
• fill: Change the fill color of the confidence region.

A simplified format of the function geom_smooth():

geom_smooth(method="auto", se=TRUE, fullrange=FALSE, level=0.95)
• method : smoothing method to be used. Possible values are lm, glm, gam, loess, rlm.
• method = “loess”: This is the default value for small number of observations. It computes a smooth local regression. You can read more about loess using the R code ?loess.
• method =“lm”: It fits a linear model. Note that, it’s also possible to indicate the formula as formula = y ~ poly(x, 3) to specify a degree 3 polynomial.
• se : logical value. If TRUE, confidence interval is displayed around smooth.
• fullrange : logical value. If TRUE, the fit spans the full range of the plot
• level : level of confidence interval to use. Default value is 0.95

## Regression line

To add a regression line on a scatter plot, the function geom_smooth() is used in combination with the argument method = lm. lm stands for linear model.

p <- ggplot(cars, aes(speed, dist)) +
geom_point()
p + geom_smooth(method = lm)

# loess method: local regression fitting
p + geom_smooth(method = "loess")

## Loess method for local regression fitting

# loess method: local regression fitting
p + geom_smooth(method = "loess")

## Polynomial interpolation

# Remove the confidence bande: se = FALSE
p + geom_smooth(method = "lm", formula = y ~ poly(x, 3), se = FALSE)

## Spline interpolation

spline.d <- as.data.frame(spline(cars$speed, cars$dist))
p + geom_line(data = spline.d, aes(x = x, y = y))`

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