Knowledge Quiz

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You run ggplot(data = mpg) on its own and see a blank grey rectangle with no points, bars, or lines on it. Which of the following, if added, would fix this?

  • Wrong: theme_bw() only changes background styling; it doesn’t add any visual marks.
  • Wrong: labs() only changes text labels; it doesn’t add any visual marks.
  • Correct: a geometry layer tells ggplot2 how to draw the mapped data, which is exactly what’s missing.
  • Wrong: an aesthetic mapping only tells ggplot2 which variables to use and how; without a geom, there is still nothing telling it how to draw them. Meta-information

You run the following code:

ggplot(mpg, aes(x = displ, y = hwy)) +
geom_point() +
geom_smooth()

What best describes the resulting plot?

  • Correct: each geom layer adds its own visual marks on top of the existing plot, so both the points and the smoothed line appear together.
  • Wrong: adding a layer with + never removes an earlier layer; layers stack rather than replace one another.
  • Wrong: geoms inherit the x/y mapping from ggplot() unless they specify their own, so geom_smooth() works here without an extra aes() call.
  • Wrong: ggplot2 plots can combine as many geometry layers as needed in a single plot.

Which statements correctly describe labs() and theme_*() functions in ggplot2? (Select all that apply.)

  • TRUE: labs() accepts arguments matching any aesthetic or title role you want to relabel.
  • FALSE: + layers are additive; a saved plot object already contains its data, mapping, and geometry, and a theme layer is simply appended on top.
  • TRUE: this is exactly what a theme controls: appearance, not the underlying mappings or geometry.
  • FALSE: themes never change what data is mapped to which aesthetic; that is controlled entirely by aes().
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