# The philosophy of ggdibbler

## The `ggdibbler` philosophy

Twenty-five years ago Leeland Wilkinson said that the framework described every statistics visualisation you could possibly make, and and 25 years later it still seems like half the field of visualisation doesn’t believe him. This section is here to correct this misunderstanding. We will explain what we mean when we talk about uncertainty visualisation and how the `ggdibbler` approach came to be so flexible, powerful, and effective.

Since `ggdibbler` is so flexible, it has the ability to generate a lot of graphics, many of which the authors of this package have never seen before despite writing the software. Some of these graphics already exist in the literature, and some don’t. If any plot that `ggdibbler` makes looks familiar to you, it is due to it being a subset of the signal suppression philosophy, rather than through any conscious choices by us.

## How `ggdibbler` works

As powerful as the `ggdibbler` package is, the actual implementation is shockingly simple. The entire package could be a single R file if we could have implemented it as a layer extension, but the `ggplot2` team do not export it, so here we are. The main brunt of the package is literally three very simple operations.

1. It takes your distribution variables and does n resamples (controlled by `times` in the package)
2. It then groups by the interaction of the usual `ggplot2` groups and `drawID` (an ID number for the draw each value comes from)
3. It feeds this altered data through the ggplot pipeline you specified in your code (i.e. scale, stat, position, geom, coord, and theme)

These three components each answer a related question about how we want to quantify/visualise our data.

1. Statistic nesting: What is the quantified representation of your distribution (e.g. samples, quantiles, etc)?
2. Grouping structure: Do you want to visualise your uncertainty as signal (group by the distribution) or as noise (group by the draws)
3. Position nesting: How are managing you managing the over plotting created by replacing a single value with a large sample of values (e.g. layering and setting `alpha < 1`, using a `position_dodge`, etc)?

The entire package is made by nesting the already existing grammar. There is exactly one new feature we implemented that is not a variation of what was already in `ggplot` and that is the `position_subdivide` based on the Vizumap’s pixel map. The only reason we had to implement that was because `position_dodge` doesn’t work on SF objects or polygons (although we think they should). Three parts of the grammar that needed to be nested to implement ggdibbler, these are:

1. A nested scale that scales the domain of the distribution while keeping it a random variable
2. A nested statistic that takes draws from your distribution to represent it as visible data
3. The nested position adjustment that is used to separately control the overplotting in the original plot and the over plotting in the from the sample.

Choosing to nest the scale, stat, and position might seem like an odd choice, but that seemed to be the minimum number of nestings to get `ggdibbler` to work as intended.

As ggplot is build for a nested grammar (with it’s parent/child ggproto system) making the nested elements was rather straight forward, although it was far too tedious to implement it with every stat, scale, and position. So even within this subset of grammar elements `ggdibbler` does not implement a full nested version of them. The package would be greatly expanded by a full nested positioning system and having a quantile variation of all the `stat_*_sample` functions, but these features will take time. This is also not the limit of where we could take this idea. Theoretically we could also nest recursively (i.e. nest a random variable inside a random variable and plot it with a position nested inside a nested position). A random variable nested inside a random variable is actually how you could make a `ggdibbler` version of a `ggdist` graphic, but this is all beyond the current scope of the package.

## What is uncertainty visualisation?

Gather around children and let us tell you the philosophical underpinnings of our uncertainty visualisation package. The long version of the approach (which is actually think it is a good read despite being a paper) is written up in the a preprint here. A shorter version of it was given as a talk at UseR!2025 available here. The cliff notes version of these explanations is what makes up this section.

Exactly “what” uncertainty visualisation is, seems to be hard to pin down. There are two competing philosophies of uncertainty visualisation.

1. Uncertainty visualisation is any visualisation of an uncertainty statistic. This can be a variance, error, density function, probability, standard error, etc.
2. Uncertainty visualisation is a function of an existing graphic, where uncertainty is integrated into the plot in such a way that it prevents us from taking away false or misleading signals.

The difference between these philosophies is exactly what we are drawing inference on. If we are trying to understand something about the uncertainty or random variable itself, then the “signal” we are trying to extract from our graphic is the uncertainty information, so should opt for approach (1). If we are trying to draw inference on a different statistic and we want to see how the uncertainty in our observations increase of decrease the legitimacy of that take away, then we want to visualise uncertainty as noise and should opt for approach (2).

This distinction can be difficult to wrap your head around and often uncertainty visualisation researchers mix and match the two approaches without even realising it. To help you understand the difference, look at the two density visualisations below. If we feed a vector of uncertain values into a `geom_density` function what kind of visualisation should it spit out? Are we interested in the uncertainty of each individual cell or are we only interested in the uncertainty as a collective and want to see how it changes the plot that would have been made, had we fed in point estimates instead?

To show you the difference between these two approaches, we created the plots below. Both plots ask the same question: If you pass a vector of 15 distributions into a geom_density, what should it look like?. Do you want to see each individual distribution or do you only care about each individual distribution insofar as they impact the density of the vector? If you are interested in each distribution you are visualising uncertainty as signal and should use `ggdist`, if you only care about the impact on the vector density, you are visualising uncertainty as noise and should use `ggdibbler`.

We are not particularly interested in visualising uncertainty as signal, it is already covered by `ggdist` and other packages. The questions uncertainty as signal visualisations seek to answer are largely about behavioural/psychological effects and it is unclear if there are any visualisation specific questions for the field to answer. Additionally, calling these visualisation “uncertainty visualisations” implies that we should define a plot by its underlying statistics, something we don’t do for any other type of statistic (e.g. central measures or extreme values) so it is unclear why this approach was taken for uncertainty. Regardless, it is not what `ggdibbler` does.

Unlike visualising uncertainty as signal, visualising uncertainty as noise does pose an interesting visualisation question. Specifically it asks “how do we translate statistical validity into something we can see with our eyes”. Discussions around visualising uncertainty as noise often seem to believe that we should design visualisations such that signals with high certainty (i.e. statistical validity) should be visible, while signals with low uncertainty should be invisible (or at least harder to see). That is, the statistical validity should translate to perceptual ease.

We decided to call this goal “signal suppression” in reference to one of the few papers that seemed to consistently apply the “visualising uncertainty as noise” philosophy, Value Supressing Uncertainty Palettes. The only reason we didn’t call it value suppression, is because we are not actually suppressing any individual values, but rather the “plot level” take away.

This signal suppression philosophy implies three things about uncertainty visualisation. First, that the “units” of an uncertainty visualisation are distributions; second that uncertainty visualisations are random variables with limiting statistics; and finally that the integrations of the uncertainty should “interfere” with the signal we take from the plot. The rest of this section will investigate each of these ideas in more detail.

## Random variables as “units” in `distributional`

For a plot to incorporate “uncertainty” the said uncertainty must come from…. somewhere. So where is it coming from? The implication is that the “data” that is fed into an uncertainty visualisation is not standard deterministic data points but rather, random variables. That is to say, instead of each cell being a single value represented by a number, it is a single random variable represented by a distribution.

We implement this structure using `distributional`, and we give some details on how to use it in the getting started vignette, this section is going to focus on why we sue distributions instead of an estimate and it’s standard error which is more common in uncertainty visualisation literature.

During the 2024 EBS End of Year BBQ I asked Mitch if he would be willing add a estimate/standard error option to distributional. He looked at me with a kind of “???” face (in hindsight, a very valid response) and made several points that fully convinced me `ggdibbler` should only accept distributions. While this might sound like he was just trying to plug his software, the points were very legitimate. This section is basically a summary of that conversation and I think it is worth a read if you think you should be able to pass an estimate and its standard error to an uncertainty visualisation.

Only allowing distributions may feel like a restrictive choice, but it is actually far more freeing than any alternative. Every single time you make a plot in `ggdibbler`, you must draw samples some distribution. We don’t care what that distribution is, but it must be a distribution. If I removed the requirement for you to pass a distribution, I would still need to sample from a distribution, so what exactly am I supposed to sample from? Do you want us us run around our neighbourhoods asking passer-bys to shout numbers at us that “feel about this close” to your estimate? Being ignorant to the distribution you are drawing information from does not mean you aren’t drawing from a distribution.

You might argue that you can “just default to a normal distribution” but it is arguably more annoying (and more confusing) to pass `aes(colour= c(estimate = mu, st_error = sigma))` instead of `aes(colour = dist_normal(mu, sigma))` to your plot. If you want `ggdibbler` to just default to a normal distribution, you can just default to a normal distribution.

The reality is, the estimate and standard error option is more conceptually convoluted, harder to read, less transparent in what it is doing, gives you less control, and it takes longer to type. If you read this and would still prefer a standard error and an estimate over a distribution, I suspect you are looking to obfuscate your analysis from yourself, and I don’t think good software will assist you in that. If you want to live in delusion, fine, but `ggdibbler` won’t help you do it.

## Uncertainty visualisations as random variable

If we accept that the units of an uncertainty visualisation are random variables, then visualisation is a function of random variables, and therefore a random variable in of itself. If it is some kind of estimate, then that means it should have some statistical properties such as limiting distirbutions, bias/variance trade off, etc. This section is about how we achieve these properties.

When discussing “normal” random variables, we often discuss the point prediction as the “end result”, but the uncertainty visualisation conversation seems to occur in the opposite direction. We frame the uncertainty as something that needs to be added “back in” to the point prediction. If you understand uncertainty as a random variable, this framework is rather nonsensical. It would be equivalent to giving a statistician a point estimate and asked them to “add the uncertainty back in”. The reality is, it isn’t possible to do and you shouldn’t have dropped the uncertainty in the first place.

While you cannot “add uncertainty” back into a point estimate, it is true that every uncertainty visualisation has a point estimate counterpart. That visualisation is not the starting point, but the limiting statistic of an uncertainty visualisation. Basically, we are looking at the continuous mapping theorem for visual statistics, which would certainly be an interesting property for our visualisation to have. As the variance in your random variable drops to zero and your distribution approaches some point estimate, the uncertainty visualisation should also approach the visualisation of said point estimate. This approach also works for convergence to another random variable, but this would require comparing `ggdibbler` to `ggdibbler`, which is not as useful of a frameowork for validating the uncertainty visualisaitons.

To formalise this a bit more, lets say that \({X_n}, X\) is a series of random variables, and \(x\) is a constant such that \(\lim_{n \to \infty} X_n = x\). Additionally let \(V\) be the visualisation function that translates our data to a statistical graphic (be it random variable or not). Then our visualisation approach obeys continuous mapping theorem if \(\lim_{n \to \infty} V(X_n) = V(x)\).

Now, we would argue that the purest way to check convergence in a visualisation is not actually a formal maths proof but…um… just looking at it? As that is the final level of computation, looking at it with your eyes. If you are unable to tell the difference between the two graphics, then I would argue that you have convergence in visual statistics.

Achieving this continuous mapping property is also why we needed to implement the nested position system. The nested scale and statistic are required for us to pass in distributions and represent them as samples, but these two elements alone are not sufficient to achieve the continuous mapping property. You can see why in the example below, where he show that the standard `ggplot2` position is insufficient to capture the random variable’s grouping structure.

    set.seed(10)
    catdog <- tibble(
        DogOwner = sample(c(TRUE, FALSE), 25, replace=TRUE),
        CatOwner = sample(c(TRUE, FALSE), 25, replace=TRUE))

    random_catdog <- catdog |>
      mutate(
        DogOwner = dist_bernoulli(0.1 + 0.8*DogOwner),
      )

    p1 <- ggplot(catdog, aes(DogOwner)) +
      geom_bar_sample(aes(fill = CatOwner),
                      position = position_dodge(preserve="single"))+
      theme_few() +
      theme(legend.position="none", aspect.ratio = 1)+
      ggtitle("ggplot: dodge")

    p2 <- ggplot(random_catdog, aes(DogOwner)) +
      geom_bar_sample(aes(fill = CatOwner), times=30,
                      position = "dodge_dodge") +
      theme_few() +
      theme(legend.position="none", aspect.ratio = 1)+
      ggtitle("ggdibbler: dodge_dodge")

    p3 <- ggplot(random_catdog, aes(DogOwner)) +
      geom_bar_sample(aes(fill = CatOwner),  times=30,
                      position = position_dodge(preserve="single")) +
      theme_few() +
      theme(legend.position="none", aspect.ratio = 1)+
      ggtitle("ggdibbler: dodge")

    p3 <- ggplot(random_catdog, aes(DogOwner)) +
      geom_bar_sample(aes(fill = CatOwner),  times=30,
                      position = position_dodge(preserve="single")) +
      theme_few() +
      theme(legend.position="none", aspect.ratio = 1)+
      ggtitle("ggdibbler: dodge")

    p1 | p3 | p2

The continuous mapping property should always holds regardless of what random variable you are mapping, or how it is represented. From what we have seen, this property has been very consistent in `ggdibbler`. It should always work regardless of which aesthetic you map your variables to (if you make a plot where you believe it doesn’t, please let us know with a github issue). Below are two examples that illustrate this principle. The text plot consists of deterministic x and y values, but a random TRUE/FALSE value. When the variance is high we cannot tell the difference between true and false as they are literally a 50/50 coin flip, but as the variance of each random variable drops to 0, the visualisation gets easier to read and it approaches its `ggplot2` deterministic counterpart.

    set.seed(10)
    textdata <- expand_grid(x = c(1,2,3,4,5), y= c(1,2,3,4,5)) |>
      mutate(
        z0 = sample(c(TRUE, FALSE), 25, replace=TRUE)
        ) |>
      mutate(
        z1 = dist_bernoulli(0.1 + 0.8*z0),
        z2 = dist_bernoulli(0.3 + 0.4*z0),
        z3 = dist_bernoulli(0.5),
      )

    textplot <- function(var, alpha){
      ggplot(textdata, aes(x=x, y=y, lab=get(var))) +
      # ggplot(textdata, aes(x=x, y=y, lab=get(var))) +
               geom_text_sample(aes(label = after_stat(lab)),
                                size=4, alpha=alpha, times=30) +
        scale_colour_viridis_d(option="rocket") +
               #scale_colour_manual(values = c("steelblue", "firebrick")) +
               theme_few() +
               theme(aspect.ratio = 1, legend.position = "none")
    }
    p0 <- textplot("z0", 1) +
      ggtitle("Point Estimate")
    p1 <- textplot("z1", 0.05) +
      ggtitle("Binomial with p = 0.9 or 0.1")
    p2 <- textplot("z2", 0.05) +
      ggtitle("Binomial with p = 0.3 or 0.7")
    p3 <- textplot("z3", 0.05) +
      ggtitle("Binomial with p = 0.5")

    (p3 | p2 | p1 | p0)

In the second example, we use a `geom_tile` and map the uncertain variable to colour. We notice the same trend of the visualisation approaching it’s limiting statistic, the `ggplot2` counterpart.

    tiledata <- expand_grid(x = c(1,2,3,4,5), y = c(1,2,3,4,5)) |>
      mutate(
        z0 = rnorm(25, 0, 10)
        ) |>
      mutate(
        z1 = dist_normal(z0, 2),
        z2 = dist_normal(z0, 8),
        z3 = dist_normal(z0, 30),
      )

    p5 <- ggplot(tiledata, aes(x=x, y=y)) +
      geom_tile(aes(fill=z0), times=30) +
      geom_tile(colour="white", fill=NA) +
      theme_few() +
      scale_fill_viridis_c(option="rocket") +
      theme(aspect.ratio = 1, legend.position = "none") +
      ggtitle("Point Estimate")
    #> Warning in geom_tile(aes(fill = z0), times = 30): Ignoring unknown parameters:
    #> `times`

    p6 <- ggplot(tiledata, aes(x=x, y=y)) +
      geom_tile_sample(aes(fill=z1), times=30) +
      geom_tile(colour="white", fill=NA) +
      theme_few() +
      scale_fill_viridis_c(option="rocket") +
      theme(aspect.ratio = 1, legend.position = "none") +
      ggtitle("Normal with sigma = 2")

    p7 <- ggplot(tiledata, aes(x=x, y=y)) +
      geom_tile_sample(aes(fill=z2), times=30) +
      geom_tile(colour="white", fill=NA) +
      theme_few() +
      scale_fill_viridis_c(option="rocket") +
      theme(aspect.ratio = 1, legend.position = "none")  +
      ggtitle("Normal with sigma = 8")

    p8 <- ggplot(tiledata, aes(x=x, y=y)) +
      geom_tile_sample(aes(fill=z3), times=30) +
      geom_tile(colour="white", fill=NA) +
      theme_few() +
      scale_fill_viridis_c(option="rocket") +
      theme(aspect.ratio = 1, legend.position = "none")  +
      ggtitle("Normal with sigma = 20")

    (p8 | p7 | p6 | p5)

Therefore, every `ggdibbler` visualisation should have a `ggdplot2` version, that represents its limiting statistic (or specifically what the plot would approach as the variance of the random variable approaches zero). This is subtly communicated in the package using the code syntax. The code of a `ggdibbler` plot and it’s deterministic limit will be identical, except you replace `geom_*` with `geom_*_sample`. If you feed values into `geom_*_sample` that are deterministic (i.e. random variables with a variance of 0) you will also get the same `ggplot2` visualisation. This limiting property is also conveyed using the examples which always present in the `ggdibbler` documentation alongside their `ggplot` counterpart.

Not only does every `ggdibbler` plot have a `ggplot2` counterpart, but the reverse is also true. We tried to communicate this by replicating the `ggplot2` documentation exactly as it appears in `ggdibbler`. Most of it is cut for the sake of computation time (we are technically replacing every example with two examples) but when testing the package we replicated every `ggplot2` example.

## Visual interference and emergent aesthetics

The final element of the `ggdibbler` approach is the idea that the uncertainty should interfere with your ability to read the plot.

For invalid signals to become invisible, you must give your noise the ability to interfere with your reading of the plot. This is the opposite approach we typically have when mapping variables. Usually, when plotting two variables, we want the second variable not to interfere. If we are plotting height and age, we don’t want values that are particularly high on age to have an impossible to read height. However, that desire for visual independence is born from variable independence. This assumption no longer holds in the case of uncertainty and estimate. In the case of an estimate and it’s uncertainty the variables aren’t even different variables, they are two parameters of the same distribution.

Samples allow us to see a distribution as a single variable, rather than as two disjoint variables. Not only does this give us the interference we are looking for but it also allows us to keep the same scales as the point estimate. Technically quantiles would also fit the bill but implementing those in `ggdibbler` is a future project. This obviously means that `ggdibbler` never actually controls or maps any special uncertainty aesthetics, however when scrolling through the documentation you will notice that they still appear. The package is full of cases where uncertainty appears as blur, transparency, thickness, fuzziness or some other commonly referenced uncertainty aesthetic, but none of them are directly mapped by us, so where are they coming from?

This fact implies that some aesthetics are “emergent” aesthetics, as they can be generated through the combination of other mappings, while some aesthetics are primary aesthetics and will only appear in our plot if directly mapped. Any general investigation into primary vs secondary/emergent aesthetics is beyond the scope of this package but we have noticed some interesting variations when making `ggdibbler`. For example, blur and fuzziness seem to have an unexpected distinction. It appears as though blur is the combination of transparency and uncertaity in position, while fuzziness is the combination of transparency and uncertainty in size. Below are two examples from the `ggdibbler` documentation that highlight this difference.

    # examples from ggdibbler
    p1 <-  ggplot(uncertain_mtcars, aes(x = mpg)) +
      geom_dotplot_sample(binwidth = 1.5, alpha=0.2) +
      theme(aspect.ratio = 1)+
      theme_few() +
      ggtitle("Blur in geom_dotplot")
    p2 <- ggplot(uncertain_mpg, aes(cty, hwy)) +
      geom_count_sample(alpha=0.05, times=30) +
      theme(aspect.ratio = 1)+
      theme_few() +
      ggtitle("Fuzziness in geom_count")
    p1 + p2

The most facinating thing about this is that the emerging aesthetics feature is what allows `ggdibbler` to convey multiple sources of uncertainty at once in a single graphic. Blur makes it more difficult to read the position of the aesthetics and it is created by uncertainty in position. Fuzziness makes it difficult to see the size of the variable, and it is generated from uncertainty in the size. Blur does not seem to interfere with our ability to see the size, and fuzziness does not seem to interfere with our ability to read position. This could turn out to be untrue if tested in a perceptual study, but seems to be a consistent fact when looking at the examples generated for `ggdibler`.

It is important to keep the emergent aesthetics in mind when using `ggdibbler`, as explicitly plotting variables to any of the emergent aesthetics will interfere with the signal suppression process. It is not uncommon for uncertainty visualisation software to explicitly map variables to blur, fuzziness or transparency. While this seems like a sensible approach, these emergent aesthetics throw a bit of a wrench into this approach. If we have three variables, and one is mapped to transparency, another to position, and a third to some blurring aesthetic, then the manually mapped blur will interfere with the emerging blur (and vice-versa). While we have expressed a desire for interference in uncertainty visualisation, we want to make it explicit that the interference should be coming from the variable, not properly independent variables.

## Conclusion

We hope this explanation of the `ggdibbler` philosophy was helpful in understanding and using the package.