Visualization VocabularyDataviz vocabulary
Diagram: interaction plot
Drawing: Adrien Taudière (CC0)
ggplot2 example: interaction plot
Adrien Taudière (CC0); R code ↓; data: palmerpenguins (Horst, Hill & Gorman 2020) (CC0)

chart

interaction plot

Effect of one factor drawn separately for each level of another.

graphique d'interaction

Effet d'un facteur tracé séparément pour chaque niveau d'un autre.

Des droites non parallèles signalent une interaction. Vérifié : absent du corpus book_dataviz et des sources en ligne — c'est un terme de plan d'expérience statistique (stats::interaction.plot en R base) plutôt que de dataviz.

Classification

  • chart
  • lines and areas › lines
  • correlation

Channels

Attestation

  • French term: Common usage, not attested by a source

Scientific literature

OpenAlex: 889 papers since 1990, 49% in the last five years; mostly in Engineering, Chemistry, Medicine

R code of the ggplot2 example

library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(palmerpenguins)

means <- penguins |>
  filter(!is.na(sex)) |>
  group_by(species, sex) |>
  summarise(mass = mean(body_mass_g), .groups = "drop")

p <- ggplot(means, aes(x = sex, y = mass, colour = species, group = species)) +
  geom_line(linewidth = 0.7) +
  geom_point(size = 2.2) +
  geom_text(data = filter(means, sex == "female"), aes(label = species),
            hjust = 1, nudge_x = -0.06, size = 3.3, fontface = "bold") +
  scale_x_discrete(labels = c(female = "Females", male = "Males"), expand = expansion(add = c(0.6, 0.3))) +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = lex_number, breaks = lex_break_breaks, expand = lex_break_expand) +
  labs(title = "Males outweigh females by 805 g in Gentoo,\n412 g in Chinstrap",
       subtitle = "Mean body mass; lines that are not parallel show an interaction",
       x = NULL, y = "Mean body mass (g)",
       caption = "Data: palmerpenguins (Horst, Hill & Gorman 2020)") +
  theme_lex_viz(grid = "y", arrows = "y", break_not_zero = "y") +
  theme(legend.position = "none")

Cite this entry

Stable addresshttps://dataviz.adrientaudiere.com/en/term/interaction-plot.html

ReferenceTaudière Adrien. 2026. interaction plot. In Visualization Vocabulary, version 1.0.0. IdEst. https://dataviz.adrientaudiere.com/en/term/interaction-plot.html

BibTeX
@incollection{taudiere2026-interaction-plot,
  author    = {Taudière, Adrien},
  title     = {interaction plot},
  booktitle = {Visualization Vocabulary},
  year      = {2026},
  version   = {1.0.0},
  publisher = {IdEst},
  url       = {https://dataviz.adrientaudiere.com/en/term/interaction-plot.html},
  note      = {CC0 1.0}
}

Page created on 2026-10-13. Text last changed on 2026-10-22. Images last changed on 2026-11-12. Numbers computed on 2026-10-22.