Improving plot readability

Question

I need to look for correlations in the publicly available flights package. I managed to make a scatter plot using ggplot. With the code:

library(nycflights13)
attach(flights)
ggplot(flights, aes(x = arr_delay, y = dep_delay)) + 
  geom_point(size = 2) +
  geom_smooth(method="auto", se=TRUE, fullrange=FALSE, level=0.95)

As show in the image most is centered in the bottom left. Is there any way to make this graph look more visually appealing by spreading the plotted values better?

Answer 1

I used facets to separate the flights that arrived early or on time (arr_delay <=0) with those that arrived late (arr_delay>0). The relationship seems different.

library(nycflights13)
library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)

ff <- flights %>%
  filter(!is.na(arr_delay), origin=="LGA") %>%  # Filtered to reduce waiting time!
  mutate(`Arrival time`=ifelse(arr_delay<=0, "Early", "Delayed"))

ggplot(ff, aes(x = arr_delay, y = dep_delay)) + 
       geom_point(size = 2, alpha = 0.3) +
       geom_smooth(method="auto", fullrange=FALSE, level=0.95) + 
       facet_wrap(~`Arrival time`, scales="free", labeller=label_both) +
       labs(x="Arrival delay (minutes)", y="Departure delay (minutes)")

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