Gradient Scatter

Authors

[Editor] Hu Zheng;

[Contributors]

Modified

2026-01-27

Note

Hiplot website

This page is the tutorial for source code version of the Hiplot Gradient Scatter plugin. You can also use the Hiplot website to achieve no code ploting. For more information please see the following link:

https://hiplot.cn/basic/scatter-gradient?lang=en

Two-dimensional spatial scatter to demonstrate multi-numerical variable relationships.

Setup

  • System Requirements: Cross-platform (Linux/MacOS/Windows)

  • Programming language: R

  • Dependent packages: data.table; jsonlite; grafify; ggplot2

# Install packages
if (!requireNamespace("data.table", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("data.table")
}
if (!requireNamespace("jsonlite", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("jsonlite")
}
if (!requireNamespace("grafify", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("grafify")
}
if (!requireNamespace("ggplot2", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("ggplot2")
}

# Load packages
library(data.table)
library(jsonlite)
library(grafify)
library(ggplot2)
sessioninfo::session_info("attached")
─ Session info ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 setting  value
 version  R version 4.5.2 (2025-10-31)
 os       Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS
 system   x86_64, linux-gnu
 ui       X11
 language (EN)
 collate  C.UTF-8
 ctype    C.UTF-8
 tz       UTC
 date     2026-01-27
 pandoc   3.1.3 @ /usr/bin/ (via rmarkdown)
 quarto   1.8.27 @ /usr/local/bin/quarto

─ Packages ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 package    * version date (UTC) lib source
 data.table * 1.18.0  2025-12-24 [1] RSPM
 ggplot2    * 4.0.1   2025-11-14 [1] RSPM
 grafify    * 5.1.0   2025-08-25 [1] RSPM
 jsonlite   * 2.0.0   2025-03-27 [1] RSPM

 [1] /home/runner/work/_temp/Library
 [2] /opt/R/4.5.2/lib/R/site-library
 [3] /opt/R/4.5.2/lib/R/library
 * ── Packages attached to the search path.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Data Preparation

# Load data
data <- data.table::fread(jsonlite::read_json("https://hiplot.cn/ui/basic/scatter-gradient/data.json")$exampleData[[1]]$textarea[[1]])
data <- as.data.frame(data)

# View data
head(data)
                car  mpg cyl disp  hp drat    wt  qsec vs am gear carb
1         Mazda RX4 21.0   6  160 110 3.90 2.620 16.46  0  1    4    4
2     Mazda RX4 Wag 21.0   6  160 110 3.90 2.875 17.02  0  1    4    4
3        Datsun 710 22.8   4  108  93 3.85 2.320 18.61  1  1    4    1
4    Hornet 4 Drive 21.4   6  258 110 3.08 3.215 19.44  1  0    3    1
5 Hornet Sportabout 18.7   8  360 175 3.15 3.440 17.02  0  0    3    2
6           Valiant 18.1   6  225 105 2.76 3.460 20.22  1  0    3    1

Visualization

# Gradient Scatter
p <- ggplot(data, aes(x = mpg, y = disp)) + 
  geom_point(aes(fill = gear), size = 5, alpha = 1, shape = 21, stroke = 0.5) +
  labs(fill = "gear", color = "gear") +
  theme_classic(base_size = 10) +
  theme(strip.background = element_blank()) +
  guides(x = guide_axis(angle = 0)) +
  scale_fill_gradient(low = "#00438E", high = "#E43535") +
  scale_color_gradient(low = "#00438E", high = "#E43535") + 
  guides(fill = guide_legend(title = "gear"),
         size = guide_legend(title = "gear")) +
  ggtitle("Scatter-gradient Plot") +
  theme(text = element_text(family = "Arial"),
        plot.title = element_text(size = 12,hjust = 0.5),
        axis.title = element_text(size = 12),
        axis.text = element_text(size = 10),
        axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 0, hjust = 0.5,vjust = 1),
        legend.position = "right",
        legend.direction = "vertical",
        legend.title = element_text(size = 10),
        legend.text = element_text(size = 10))

p
FigureΒ 1: Gradient Scatter