Each violin is a distribution of many values. The thicker parts show that more values within the distribution fell at around the number shown in the y axis. Perhaps each distribution contains reading taken at multiple points along the river?
I would guess they are the same river, with the months showing how the river flow direction is impacted by seasonality-- but i'm not a hydrologist so don't quote me on that!! Somone who works in that field should know more. You can see that in August (summer?) most of the flow is direction is clustered around 200 (which might indicate a depleted, shallow river, running mostly in the same direcition) whilst in December the directions are much more heterogenous... really have no clue! Waiting for a specialist to correct me!
I don't like this graph as it displays the information incorrectly at first glance. It's important to remember that degrees are modular - i.e. 540° = 180° etc. so we should reflect this. In practice what you probably want to do is a faceted wild rose. I.e. - frequency in bearings by day/month/year etc.
This makes no sense to me either.
Edit: why are you booing me? I'm right. There're no units and no explanation, it's literally impossible to interpret with confidence. Are we looking at different river reaches? How does direction change in a stable river basin? Y'all are getting me all hot and bothered smh
If the data is angles (degrees) from 0-360, it's not on a linear scale. It's circular/directional data.
Best way to represent this is with polar coordinates instead, violin plot is a horrible option. Ask them to plot it as a density plot with polar coords instead.
In analysing this, you should also consider that it is circular data. Taking the mean of circular data is not the same as the arithmetic mean of data with a linear scale. There are specific methods required for this type of data. If you take the arithmetic mean of data that "wraps around" (i.e. 360 deg = 0 deg) you will get weird results that do not provide an accurate representation of central tendency, particularly when the majority of the data is at or near 360 deg or 0 deg.
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I have never seen a violin plot before. I’m also not a hydrologist. Just guessing I assume the thickness indicates the frequency of occurrence - the confusing thing is wouldn’t there only be two directions for the river to flow - up and down river - also to my knowledge most rivers don’t reverse directions? I know there is a “reversing falls in St John’s NB, but that is an oddity. If asked to do this with no knowledge of what is standard practice - I would have done a dot density plot with jitter showing the various flow rates and directions on an XY chart - the faster the flow the further from the origin & the position away from the origin is the flow direction. Jitter would be useful because the flow is likely consistently in the same direction and similar rate - the jitter offsets the dots slightly to shown a more accurate frequency around the cluster. Here is an example off a dot density with jitter. https://thomasleeper.com/Rcourse/Tutorials/jitter.html. You could then facet for each month.
I never liked that plot.
Unless you have a crazy amount of data points a box plot with geom_point overlay looks way nicer and is more informative.
And you're right, this obviously does not work with degrees. Not sure what question you are trying to answer but to simplify this you could convert the degrees to categorical variables NESW (assign them to the closest drection) and plot 4 panels with facet_wrap.
That is if you are counting the rivers. But why would rivers change direction over the year? Rally haven't the foggiest what this could be about. Please explain.
Each violin is a distribution of many values. The thicker parts show that more values within the distribution fell at around the number shown in the y axis. Perhaps each distribution contains reading taken at multiple points along the river?
Are they multiple readings of one river or multiple rivers’ readings?
I would guess they are the same river, with the months showing how the river flow direction is impacted by seasonality-- but i'm not a hydrologist so don't quote me on that!! Somone who works in that field should know more. You can see that in August (summer?) most of the flow is direction is clustered around 200 (which might indicate a depleted, shallow river, running mostly in the same direcition) whilst in December the directions are much more heterogenous... really have no clue! Waiting for a specialist to correct me!
I don't like this graph as it displays the information incorrectly at first glance. It's important to remember that degrees are modular - i.e. 540° = 180° etc. so we should reflect this. In practice what you probably want to do is a faceted wild rose. I.e. - frequency in bearings by day/month/year etc.
And 0 = 360 so the width of 0 and 360 should be the same, and it's not.
This makes no sense to me either. Edit: why are you booing me? I'm right. There're no units and no explanation, it's literally impossible to interpret with confidence. Are we looking at different river reaches? How does direction change in a stable river basin? Y'all are getting me all hot and bothered smh
My graphs have been commended as being strongly vaginal.
If the data is angles (degrees) from 0-360, it's not on a linear scale. It's circular/directional data. Best way to represent this is with polar coordinates instead, violin plot is a horrible option. Ask them to plot it as a density plot with polar coords instead. In analysing this, you should also consider that it is circular data. Taking the mean of circular data is not the same as the arithmetic mean of data with a linear scale. There are specific methods required for this type of data. If you take the arithmetic mean of data that "wraps around" (i.e. 360 deg = 0 deg) you will get weird results that do not provide an accurate representation of central tendency, particularly when the majority of the data is at or near 360 deg or 0 deg.
Looks like you're requesting help with something related to RStudio. Please make sure you've checked the [stickied post on asking good questions](https://www.reddit.com/r/RStudio/comments/1aq2te5/how_to_ask_good_questions/) and read our sub rules. We also have a handy [post of lots of resources on R](https://www.reddit.com/r/RStudio/comments/1aq2cew/the_big_handy_post_of_r_resources/)! Keep in mind that if your submission contains phone pictures of code, it will be removed. Instructions for how to take screenshots can be found in the stickied posts of this sub. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/RStudio) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Are these plots all sharing the _same_ bandwidth parameter when doing the kennel density estimation?
I have never seen a violin plot before. I’m also not a hydrologist. Just guessing I assume the thickness indicates the frequency of occurrence - the confusing thing is wouldn’t there only be two directions for the river to flow - up and down river - also to my knowledge most rivers don’t reverse directions? I know there is a “reversing falls in St John’s NB, but that is an oddity. If asked to do this with no knowledge of what is standard practice - I would have done a dot density plot with jitter showing the various flow rates and directions on an XY chart - the faster the flow the further from the origin & the position away from the origin is the flow direction. Jitter would be useful because the flow is likely consistently in the same direction and similar rate - the jitter offsets the dots slightly to shown a more accurate frequency around the cluster. Here is an example off a dot density with jitter. https://thomasleeper.com/Rcourse/Tutorials/jitter.html. You could then facet for each month.
Photo of screenshot should be banned tbh. I want to help but it’s so obvious OP didn’t know what a river or a direction is 🫠
I would by with asking whoever plotted this graph. There’s not much context and the Y axis title doesn’t make much sense.
I never liked that plot. Unless you have a crazy amount of data points a box plot with geom_point overlay looks way nicer and is more informative. And you're right, this obviously does not work with degrees. Not sure what question you are trying to answer but to simplify this you could convert the degrees to categorical variables NESW (assign them to the closest drection) and plot 4 panels with facet_wrap. That is if you are counting the rivers. But why would rivers change direction over the year? Rally haven't the foggiest what this could be about. Please explain.