Arrowhead used as a size aesthetic in ggplot2

Question

I've got data containing vectors' coordinates and their characteristics - success_rate and prop:

Click to copy

ex_data <- structure(list(group = c("group A", "group A", "group A", "group A", 
"group A", "group A", "group C", "group C", "group C", "group C", 
"group C", "group W", "group W", "group W", "group W", "group W"
), category = c(5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 6, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 4, 5, 2, 
3), success_rate = c(0.816037735849057, 0.938775510204082, 0.653061224489796, 
0.985915492957746, 0.934306569343066, 1, 0.979166666666667, 0.887323943661972, 
0.319587628865979, 0.721590909090909, 0.941176470588235, 0.689320388349515, 
0.338028169014085, 0.396551724137931, 0.7375, 0.763948497854077
), x0 = c(24.5, 24.5, 23.7, 22.6, 28.6, 27.6, 27.2, 27.4, 15.7, 
25.5, 24.2, 21.4, 17.5, 9.9, 23.6, 29), y0 = c(21.2, 27.9, 96.6, 
43.9, 65.1, 71.5, 34.3, 71.2, 47.9, 88, 36, 86.9, 49.4, 41.3, 
85.6, 16.7), x1 = c(35.2, 36.5, 34, 32.9, 39.4, 40.2, 35.9, 31.6, 
63.1, 29.5, 35.9, 35.4, 61.4, 54, 37.3, 37.2), y1 = c(5.8, 33.6, 
96.8, 70, 64.8, 96.6, 7.3, 64.9, 63.1, 89.7, 38.5, 95, 59.3, 
32.2, 77.9, 12), prop = c(0.124926340601061, 0.0866234531526223, 
0.0288744843842074, 0.041838538597525, 0.0807307012374779, 0.0271066588096641, 
0.0365853658536585, 0.0541158536585366, 0.0739329268292683, 0.134146341463415, 
0.0259146341463415, 0.0787461773700306, 0.108562691131498, 0.0443425076452599, 
0.0611620795107034, 0.178134556574924)), class = c("tbl_df", 
"tbl", "data.frame"), row.names = c(NA, -16L))

I wan't to make a graphic of vectors for each group that would use prop as a size aesthetic. Unfortunetely, I don't think in case of arrows size aesthetics doesn't work well as its resizing the whole arrow which often look bad:

Click to copy

ggplot(ex_data) +
  geom_segment(aes(x = x0, y = y0, xend = x1, yend = y1, color = success_rate, size = prop),
               arrow = arrow(length = unit(0.2, "cm"), ends = 'last', type = 'closed')) +
  facet_wrap(~group) +
  scale_color_viridis_c()

So I would like to control only the size of the arrowhead with prop variable. Unfortunetely, arrowheads are not geom_segment aesthetic and the only way to control their sizes is to supply them with separate vector. It works nice for a single group:

Click to copy

ex_data %>% 
  filter(group == 'group C') %>% 
  ggplot() +
  geom_segment(aes(x = x0, y = y0, xend = x1, yend = y1, color = success_rate),
               arrow = arrow(length = unit(filter(ex_data, group == 'group C')$prop * 3, "cm"), ends = 'last', type = 'closed')) +
  facet_wrap(~group) +
  scale_color_viridis_c()

but not with facet_wrap:

Click to copy

ggplot(ex_data) +
  geom_segment(aes(x = x0, y = y0, xend = x1, yend = y1, color = success_rate),
               arrow = arrow(length = unit(ex_data$prop * 3, "cm"), ends = 'last', type = 'closed')) +
  facet_wrap(~group) +
  scale_color_viridis_c()

You can notice that sizes of arrowheads for group C are not valid anymore (eg. the upper arrow should have the biggest arrowhead, while it has the smallest). My original data has much more groups and creating separate plots would be really tedious. Is there any workaround for this?

Answer 1

As is usual in such cases (e.g., 1, 2, 3), we may use sub-data frames for each facet. For instance,

Click to copy

ggplot(ex_data) +
  lapply(split(ex_data, ex_data$group), function(df)
  geom_segment(data = df, aes(x = x0, y = y0, xend = x1, yend = y1, color = success_rate),
               arrow = arrow(length = unit(df$prop * 3, "cm"), ends = 'last', type = 'closed'))) +
  facet_wrap(~group) + scale_color_viridis_c()