Spooky Seasons Greetings

Let’s do some paranormal plotting!

I thought it’d be fun to celebrate spooky season with a little stats punny plot. We’re going to turn a normal distribution into a paranormal distribution! HA!

Ok first let’s get some packages.

library(tidyverse)
library(tweenr)
library(gganimate)

Now let’s generate our Normal data:

We’re doing this twice in the data frame because we need to have the same number of data points as the paranormal data, which has a little wiggly bottom.

n <- 100
x_top <- seq(-1.5, 1.5, length.out = n)
y_top <- dnorm(x_top)

data_normal <- data.frame(
  x = c(x_top, rev(x_top)),
  y = c(y_top, rep(0.1, n)),
  state = "normal"
)

Cool beans. Now, for the paranormal, I want a little sine wiggle so it looks like a cute ghost! Let’s make that happen.

x_bottom <- seq(-1.5, 1.5, length.out = n)
y_bottom <- -0.15 + 0.1 * sin(3 * pi * (x_bottom + 1.5)) - 0.1

data_ghost <- data.frame(
  x = c(x_top, rev(x_bottom)),
  y = c(y_top, rev(y_bottom)),
  state = "paranormal"
)

Ok, now let’s use that tween_states function from the tweenr package to interpolate. This will make for a fun .gif!

interpolated_data <- tween_states(
  list(data_normal, data_ghost), 
  nframes = 100,
  tweenlength = 3,
  statelength = 1,
  ease = "cubic-in-out"
)

I also want little labels for people who can’t tell what we are going for (in case my pun is not wonderfully obvious to everyone!)

interpolated_data <- interpolated_data |>
  mutate(label = case_when(
    .frame < 75 ~ "normal",          
    .frame >= 75 ~ "paranormal"  
  ))

And EYES!

eyes_data <- expand_grid(
  x = c(-0.5, 0.5), 
  y = 0.15,
  .frame = 75:100
)

Thank you to Libby Heeren for the inspiration!

And now for the plot!

p <- ggplot(interpolated_data, aes(x = x, y = y)) +
  geom_polygon(fill = "white", color = "black", linewidth = 1.5) +
  geom_label(aes(label = label), x = 0, y = 0, size = 6, vjust = -1, na.rm = TRUE) +  
  geom_point(data = eyes_data) +
  theme_void() +
  theme(
    panel.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent", color = NA),
    plot.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent", color = NA)
  ) +
  transition_time(.frame)

And finally, let’s animate it!

animate(p, duration = 5, fps = 30, width = 500, height = 500, 
        renderer = gifski_renderer("ghost_morph.gif"))