Visualization VocabularyDataviz vocabulary
Diagram: ridgeline plot
Drawing: Adrien Taudière (CC0)
ggplot2 example: ridgeline plot
Adrien Taudière (CC0); R code ↓; data: gapminder (Bryan 2025) (CC BY 4.0)

chart

ridgeline plot

also: joyplot

Vertically offset densities used to compare distributions.

graphique en crêtes

Densités décalées verticalement pour comparer des distributions.

Ancien nom anglais, à éviter : joy plot, allusion à la pochette de l'album Unknown Pleasures de Joy Division (1979). Le groupe a pris son nom dans House of Dolls (1953), roman de Ka-tzetnik 135633, pseudonyme de Yehiel De-Nur, rescapé d'Auschwitz. Les « Joy Divisions » (Freudenabteilungen) y désignent les bordels des camps de concentration nazis, où des détenues étaient réduites à l'esclavage sexuel. C'est pourquoi Claus Wilke, auteur du paquet R ggjoy, a abandonné ce nom en 2017 pour ridgeline plot et remplacé ggjoy par ggridges (billet « Goodbye joyplots », 15/09/2017).

Classification

  • chart
  • boxes and densities › density shapes
  • distribution
  • the name evokes: nature

Channels

Attestation and synonyms

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

Scientific literature

OpenAlex: 52 papers since 2018, 75% in the last five years; mostly in Computer Science, Mathematics, Medicine; Wikidata

Seminal references

R packages

R code of the ggplot2 example

library(ggplot2)
library(ggridges)
library(gapminder)

p <- ggplot(gapminder, aes(x = lifeExp, y = factor(year), fill = year)) +
  geom_density_ridges(aes(group = year), colour = "#535353", alpha = 0.8,
                      scale = 2.5, linewidth = 0.4) +
  scale_x_continuous(labels = lex_number, breaks = lex_break_breaks, expand = lex_break_expand) +
  labs(title = "Life expectancy rose from 1952 to 2007",
       subtitle = "142 countries; median 45 years in 1952, 72 in 2007",
       x = "Life expectancy (years)", y = NULL,
       caption = "Data: Gapminder, via the gapminder R package") +
  theme_lex_viz(grid = "x", break_not_zero = "x") +
  theme(legend.position = "none")

Sources (9)

30 occurrences in the corpus; indexed by 3 books

Cite this entry

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

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

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

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