The goal of scatterHatch is to create scatter plots that visually distinguish groups of data using color and texture in sparse or dense datasets.
It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. In bioinformatics, visualizations attempt to concisely convey complex relationships between a multitude of factors and groups. One could argue these visualizations are worth a lot more than a thousand words. However, it is important to remember there is a balance between encapsulating large amounts of information in a visualization, and correctly deciphering that same information from a visualization. This balance is not the same for everyone in an audience.
In bioinformatics, scatterplots often contain many groups represented by many colors. Distinguishing among unique groups can be a difficult task for colorblind individuals. This package provides the scatterHatch function that adds a texture to each group in a scatterplot so that colorblind individuals can distinguish groups using two characteristics instead of one.
You can install scatterHatch directly from the Github source.
install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("FertigLab/scatterHatchPlots", dependencies = TRUE, build_vignettes = TRUE)
To learn how to use the scatterHatch package, run the vignette below in R.