How to Add a Regression Line to a ggplot?

Linear regression is arguably the most widely used statistical model out there. It’s simple and gives easily interpretable results. Since linear regression essentially fits a line to a set of points it can also be readily visualized. This post focuses on how to do that in R using the {ggplot2} package.

Let’s start off by creating a scatter plot of weight (wt) vs. horse power (hp) of cars in the infamous mtcars dataset.

library(ggplot2)data(mtcars)p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, hp)) +  geom_point()p

There’s an obvious positive trend visible: the heavier a car is the higher its horse power tend to be.

Next, let’s add a smoother to make this trend even more apparent.

p + geom_smooth()

By default, geom_smooth() adds a LOESS smoother to the data. That’s not what we’re after, though. To make geom_smooth() draw a linear regression line we have to set the method parameter to "lm" which is short for “linear model”.

p + geom_smooth(method = "lm")

The gray shading around the line represents the 95% confidence interval. You can change the confidence interval level by changing the level parameter. A value of 0.8 represents a 80% confidence interval.

p + geom_smooth(method = "lm", level = 0.8)

If you don’t want to show the confidence interval band at all, set the se parameter to FALSE.

p + geom_smooth(method = "lm", se = FALSE)

Sometimes a line is not a good fit to the data but a polynomial would be. So, how to add a polynomial regression line to a plot? To do so, we will still have to use geom_smooth() with method = "lm" but in addition specify the formula parameter. By default, formula is set to y ~ x (read: y as a function of x). To draw a polynomial of degree n you have to change the formula to y ~ poly(x, n). Here’s an example fitting a 2nd degree (quadratic) polynomial regression line.

ggplot(mtcars, aes(qsec, hp)) +  geom_point() +  geom_smooth(method = "lm", formula = y ~ poly(x, 2))

Now it’s your turn! Start a new R session, load some data, and create a ggplot with a linear regression line. Happy programming!

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