Alluvial Plots in 'ggplot2' - Alluvial Plots in ggplot2 - package ggalluvial

Oct 26, 2026

Upload by Stanley

R package ggalluvial provides statistical graphics for alluvial plots, using variable-width ribbons and stacked bar representations to show relationships in multi-dimensional or repeated-measures categorical/ordinal data. The package extends ggplot2’s layered grammar to generate alluvial plots from tidy data, uniquely determined by the dataset and a small set of parameters. It also offers helpers to structure and convert alluvial data formats, including checks for lodes/alluvia structure and transformations between lodes and alluvia representations.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryTechnology

FormatPDF

Pages41

Reading Time1 h 43 min

AccessFree to download

Overview

Alluvial plots concept

Relationship to Sankey and parallel sets

Layered grammar for ggplot2

Data structure utilities

alluvial-data overview

is_lodes_form

is_alluvia_form

to_lodes_form

to_alluvia_form

Package ‘ggalluvial’ May 8, 2026 Type Package Title Alluvial Plots in 'ggplot2'Version 0.12.6 Maintainer Jason Cory Brunson <[cornelioid@gmail.com](cornelioid@gmail.com)> Description Alluvial plots use variable-width ribbons and stacked bar plots to represent multi-dimensional or repeated-measures data with categorical or ordinal variables; see Riehmann, Hanfler, and Froehlich (2005) and Rosvall and Bergstrom (2010) . Alluvial plots are statistical graphics in the sense of Wilkinson (2006); they share elements with Sankey diagrams and parallel sets plots but are uniquely determined from the data and a small set of parameters. This package extends Wickham's (2010) layered grammar of graphics to generate alluvial plots from tidy data. Depends R (>= 3.6), ggplot2 (>= 2.2) Imports stats, dplyr (>= 0.7), tidyr (>= 0.7), lazyeval, rlang, tidyselect Suggests grid, alluvial, testthat, knitr, rmarkdown, babynames, sessioninfo, ggrepel, shiny (>= [1.4.0.2](1.4.0.2)), htmltools, sp (>= 1.4-0), ggfittext (>= 0.6), vdiffr (>= 0.2) License GPL-3 LazyData true URL [http://corybrunson.github.io/ggalluvial/](http://corybrunson.github.io/ggalluvial/) BugReports [https://github.com/corybrunson/ggalluvial/issues](https://github.com/corybrunson/ggalluvial/issues) VignetteBuilder knitr RoxygenNote 7.2.3 Encoding UTF-8 NeedsCompilation no Author Jason Cory Brunson [aut, cre], Quentin D. Read [aut] 2 alluvial-data Repository CRAN Date/Publication 2026-02-22 12:30:02 UTC Contents alluvial-data ......................................... 2 geom_alluvium ....................................... 5 geom_flow ......................................... 10 geom_lode .......................................... 15 geom_stratum ........................................ 17 lode-guidance-functions .................................. 19 majors ............................................ 21 self-adjoin .......................................... 21 stat_alluvium ........................................ 22 stat_flow ........................................... 28 stat_stratum ......................................... 33 vaccinations ......................................... 38 Index 40 | alluvial-data | Check for alluvial structure and convert between alluvial formats | | --- | --- | Description Alluvial plots consist of multiple horizontally-distributed columns (axes) representing factor variables, vertical divisions (strata) of these axes representing these variables’ values; and splines (alluvial flows) connecting vertical subdivisions (lodes) within strata of adjacent axes representing subsets or amounts of observations that take the corresponding values of the corresponding variables. This function checks a data frame for either of two types of alluvial structure: Usage is_lodes_form( data, key, value, id, weight = NULL, site = NULL, logical = TRUE, silent = FALSE) is_alluvia_form( data, . . . , alluvial-data 3 axes = NULL, weight = NULL, logical = TRUE, silent = FALSE) to_lodes_form( data, . . . , axes = NULL, key = "x", value = "stratum", id = "alluvium", diffuse = FALSE, discern = FALSE) to_alluvia_form(data, key, value, id, distill = FALSE) Arguments data A data frame. key, value, id In to_lodes_form, handled as in tidyr::gather() and used to name the new axis (key), stratum (value), and alluvium (identifying) variables. In to_alluvia_form, handled as in tidyr::spread() and used to identify the fields of data to be used as the axis (key), stratum (value), and alluvium (identifying) variables. weight Optional field of data, handled using rlang::enquo(), to be used as heights or depths of the alluvia or lodes. site Optional vector of fields of data, handled using rlang::enquos(), to be used to group row

FAQs

What kind of data can ggalluvial visualize with alluvial plots?

ggalluvial targets multi-dimensional or repeated-measures categorical/ordinal data, where relationships can be represented with flows between axis values. It supports tidy-data workflows for building these graphics.

How does ggalluvial generate alluvial plots within ggplot2?

The package extends ggplot2’s layered grammar of graphics so alluvial plots are constructed from tidy data. The resulting plots are determined by the input data and a small set of parameters.

What is the purpose of alluvial-data utilities like is_lodes_form and to_lodes_form?

These utilities check whether a data frame has lodes or alluvia structure and convert between formats. They identify axis, stratum/value, and alluvium/id variables and can optionally use weight and site fields.

Oct 26, 2026

Upload by Stanley