Barcelona Summer School of Demography | Module 3: Data visualization with R

About

The Barcelona Summer School of Demography (BSSD) program is a comprehensive four-week course focusing exclusively on the R statistical language. It is structured into four distinct modules, with each module spanning a week (20hs), designed to provide an in-depth understanding of different aspects of the R language: statistical and demographic analysis, data visualization and spatial analysis. Applicants are invited to register in either the full four-week BSSD course or select individual modules that align with their specific learning needs and interests.
Module 3 focuses on data visualization using ggplot2 and the ‘tidyverse’ approach in R programming.
This module will cover the following content:

Day 1: Principles of data visualization. Cognitive foundations and perception in visual communication. The tidy data paradigm. Introduction to the Grammar of Graphics and ggplot2’s additive logic (data, aesthetics, geometries).
Day 2: Choosing the right visual form. When and why to use specific geometries. Core plot types: line plots, bar charts, scatter plots, and heatmaps. Mapping variables to aesthetics effectively.
Day 3: Design and refinement in ggplot2. Color theory and palette selection. Themes, typography, and visual hierarchy. Annotation strategies and types. Combining plots with patchwork and cowplot.
Day 4: Advanced visualization techniques. Faceting and multivariate displays. Statistical transformations (smoothing, binning, summaries). Distribution and composition plots (ggridges, treemaps, alluvial diagrams). Producing publication-ready figures and reproducible workflows with RMarkdown/Quarto.
Day 5: From static to interactive storytelling. Interactive graphics with plotly and animated visualization with gganimate. Team-based data visualization challenge. Short presentations, peer discussion, and course synthesis

Course leader

Anna Turu holds a degree in Statistics and a postgraduate degree in Methods and Techniques for Population Studies. She has over 20 years of experience in population data processing. Currently, she teaches inequality indicators and the R statistical software at Pompeu Fabra University and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Rita Trias is a PhD candidate at CED and UAB. Her research examines gendered family dynamics from a global comparative perspective, with a particular emphasis on living arrangements. She has experience using R for statistical analysis and data visualization.

Target group

Master and PhD Students, Researchers, Data Journalists and people how work with population data in general

Course aim

Students will learn the tidyverse approach to R and how to produced different types of data visualizations using ggplot2

Fee info