Package {circlecorR}

Title: Circular Correlation Wheel Plots
Version: 0.1.0
Description: Draws circular "correlation wheel" plots in R, straight from a data frame of one row per observation. Variables are arranged around a circle, grouped and colour-tiled by category, and connected by curved links whose colour maps to the correlation coefficient, computed via a thin wrapper around corr.test() from the 'psych' package. Non-significant, weak, and within-category correlations can be masked. Categories, colours, and labels are all user-configurable.
License: MIT + file LICENSE
Language: en-GB
Encoding: UTF-8
Depends: R (≥ 4.1.0)
Imports: circlize (≥ 0.4.0), graphics, psych, stats
Suggests: testthat (≥ 3.0.0), knitr, rmarkdown
Config/testthat/edition: 3
LazyData: true
VignetteBuilder: knitr
URL: https://kriz98.github.io/circlecorR/, https://github.com/kriz98/circlecorR
BugReports: https://github.com/kriz98/circlecorR/issues
Config/roxygen2/version: 8.0.0
NeedsCompilation: no
Packaged: 2026-07-19 00:48:19 UTC; cvar706
Author: Chris Varghese [aut, cre], Armen A. Gharibans [aut]
Maintainer: Chris Varghese <chris.varghese@auckland.ac.nz>
Repository: CRAN
Date/Publication: 2026-07-28 16:20:09 UTC

circlecorR: Circular Correlation Wheel Plots

Description

Draws MNE-style circular "correlation wheel" plots natively in R. The main entry point is corr_wheel(); compute_correlations() builds the r/p input from raw data.

Author(s)

Maintainer: Chris Varghese chris.varghese@auckland.ac.nz

Authors:

See Also

Useful links:

Compute a correlation matrix and (raw) p-values from raw data

Description

A thin wrapper around psych::corr.test() that returns the correlation (r) and unadjusted p-value (p) matrices bundled in a single object suitable for passing straight to corr_wheel().

Usage

compute_correlations(
  data,
  vars = NULL,
  method = c("pearson", "spearman", "kendall"),
  use = "pairwise.complete.obs"
)

Arguments

data

A data frame or matrix of observations (rows) by variables (columns).

vars

Optional character vector selecting and ordering the columns of data to use. Defaults to all columns.

method

Correlation method, passed to psych::corr.test(). One of "pearson", "spearman", "kendall".

use

Handling of missing values, passed to psych::corr.test().

Details

Multiple-comparison adjustment is deliberately not applied here. On a correlation wheel, self-correlations and (usually) within-category correlations are never tested, so they should not count towards the family of comparisons. corr_wheel() therefore applies the adjustment itself, over exactly the set of correlations it displays – which is both statistically consistent and more powerful than adjusting across the full matrix. See the adjust and hide_within_group arguments of corr_wheel().

Value

An object of class "circlecor": a list with elements r (the correlation matrix), p (a symmetric matrix of raw, unadjusted p-values), n (the pairwise sample sizes from psych), and method.

See Also

corr_wheel()

Examples

cc <- compute_correlations(mtcars, method = "pearson")
str(cc)

Draw a circular correlation wheel plot

Description

Arranges variables around a circle, grouped and colour-tiled by category, and connects them with curved links whose colour maps to the correlation coefficient. Non-significant, weak, and (optionally) within-category correlations are masked. This reproduces the MNE-style "connectivity circle" natively in R using circlize.

Usage

corr_wheel(
  data,
  groups = NULL,
  scheme = NULL,
  colors = NULL,
  labels = NULL,
  order = NULL,
  sig_level = 0.05,
  r_threshold = 0,
  hide_within_group = TRUE,
  method = c("pearson", "spearman", "kendall"),
  adjust = "holm",
  use = "pairwise.complete.obs",
  r_limits = c(-0.5, 0.5),
  palette = NULL,
  start_degree = 90,
  group_gap = 5,
  node_gap = 1.5,
  link_lwd = 1.6,
  sort_links = TRUE,
  tile_height = 0.06,
  label_cex = 0.85,
  label_pad = 0.45,
  label_r_offset = 0.07,
  tile_border = "white",
  title = NULL,
  legend = TRUE,
  colorbar = TRUE,
  legend_title = "Category",
  colorbar_title = "Correlation\ncoefficient"
)

Arguments

data

A data frame or matrix with one row per observation (e.g. one row per patient) and variables in columns. Correlations and p-values are computed for you via compute_correlations() using method, adjust, and use. When groups is supplied, only the variables it names are used (in that order), so extra columns such as an ID are simply ignored.

groups

Category assignment for the variables. Either a named vector (variable = category) or a named list (category = c(variables)). The order of categories here sets their order around the wheel. If NULL, all variables share one group.

scheme

A colour scheme providing the base category colours and diverging link palette together. One of:

  • NULL (default) – use the package default scheme;

  • a built-in scheme name, see corr_wheel_schemes() (e.g. "colorblind", "ocean", "vivid", "alimetry");

  • a custom list(colors = , palette = ), as returned by corr_wheel_scheme() (optionally tweaked).

colors and palette (below), if supplied, override the scheme's corresponding piece – so you can pick a scheme and still tweak one category's colour, for instance.

colors

Named vector mapping category to colour, layered on top of scheme (or the default palette if scheme is NULL). Only the categories you name are overridden; others keep the scheme's colour.

labels

Named vector mapping variable name to a display label. Missing entries fall back to the variable name.

order

Optional character vector giving an explicit variable order around the wheel. Overrides ordering by groups. Must contain every variable.

sig_level

Significance threshold; links with adjusted p > sig_level are hidden.

r_threshold

Minimum absolute correlation to display.

hide_within_group

Logical; if TRUE (default) correlations between two variables in the same category are hidden – and excluded from the multiple-comparison family (see Details). Self-correlations (the diagonal) are always excluded.

method, use

Passed to compute_correlations(): the correlation method and the missing-value handling.

adjust

Multiple-comparison adjustment method applied to the raw p-values over the displayed family of correlations (see Details). Any method accepted by stats::p.adjust() (e.g. "holm", "hochberg", "BH", "bonferroni", "none").

r_limits

Length-2 numeric giving the colour-scale limits (c(vmin, vmax)). Correlations beyond these are clamped for colour.

palette

Colours for the diverging link scale at c(r_limits[1], midpoint, r_limits[2]), overriding scheme's. NULL (default) uses the scheme's palette, or a blue-white-red scale if scheme is also NULL.

start_degree

Angle (degrees) of the first variable; 90 places it at the top, going clockwise.

group_gap, node_gap

Gaps (degrees) between categories and between variables within a category.

link_lwd

Line width (size) of the links. Increase for thicker lines.

sort_links

If TRUE (default), stronger correlations are drawn last (on top).

tile_height

Radial thickness (size) of the coloured category blocks. Smaller values give thinner blocks at the rim.

label_cex, tile_border

Label text size and tile border colour.

label_pad

Extra canvas padding (as a fraction of the circle radius) to keep long outer labels from being clipped. Increase for longer labels.

label_r_offset

Radial gap (in circle-radius units) between the outer edge of the tiles and the start of the labels.

title

Optional plot title.

legend, colorbar

Logical toggles for the category legend and the correlation colour bar.

legend_title, colorbar_title

Titles for the legend and colour bar.

Details

A traditional correlation matrix is dominated by redundant information: the diagonal of self-correlations, the mirror-image lower triangle, and blocks of within-category correlations that are rarely of interest. The wheel keeps only the correlations you actually want to inspect – by default the between-category correlations, with self- and within-category correlations hidden.

This is not only a display choice; it is carried through to the statistics. The multiple-comparison adjustment (adjust) is applied over only the family of correlations shown – i.e. excluding self- and, when hide_within_group = TRUE, within-category correlations. Because those redundant comparisons no longer count towards the family, the correction is less severe and statistical power improves.

Value

Invisibly, a list with the ordered vars, resolved groups, colors, the col_fun colour mapping, the masked matrix of correlations actually drawn (others NA), the family-adjusted p-value matrix p_adjusted, the number of drawn links n_links, the size of the comparison family n_tests, and the adjust method applied.

See Also

compute_correlations(), corr_wheel_schemes(), corr_wheel_scheme()

Examples

grp <- list(
  Demographics = c("Age", "BMI"),
  Metrics      = c("Amplitude", "Fed-Fasted AR", "Frequency", "GA-RI"),
  Symptoms     = c("Nausea", "Early satiety", "Bloating", "Upper GI pain",
                   "Lower GI pain", "Heartburn"),
  Scores       = c("GCSI", "PAGI-SYM", "PAGI-QoL", "EQ-5D")
)

# `gastro_symptoms` is a synthetic example dataset bundled with the package
# (available directly after library(circlecorR) -- no need to call data()).
corr_wheel(gastro_symptoms, groups = grp, r_threshold = 0.3,
           r_limits = c(-0.6, 0.6))

# A built-in colour scheme, with one category colour overridden
corr_wheel(gastro_symptoms, groups = grp, r_threshold = 0.3,
           scheme = "colorblind", colors = c(Scores = "black"))

Get a built-in colour scheme

Description

Returns the category-colour and diverging-link-palette definition for a built-in scheme, so you can inspect it or tweak a copy before passing it to corr_wheel()'s scheme argument.

Usage

corr_wheel_scheme(name = "default")

Arguments

name

A scheme name; see corr_wheel_schemes() for the available options.

Value

A list with elements colors (an unnamed vector of category colours, cycled across however many categories are plotted) and palette (a length-3 diverging colour vector: negative, midpoint, positive).

See Also

corr_wheel_schemes(), corr_wheel()

Examples

s <- corr_wheel_scheme("colorblind")
s$palette

# Tweak a copy and use it
s$palette[2] <- "grey95"
data(gastro_symptoms)
grp <- list(Demographics = c("Age", "BMI"),
           Metrics = c("Amplitude", "Fed-Fasted AR", "Frequency", "GA-RI"))
if (requireNamespace("psych", quietly = TRUE)) {
  corr_wheel(gastro_symptoms, groups = grp, scheme = s, r_threshold = 0)
}

List built-in colour schemes

Description

Returns the names of the colour schemes bundled with the package, for use as the scheme argument of corr_wheel().

Usage

corr_wheel_schemes()

Value

A character vector of scheme names.

See Also

corr_wheel_scheme(), corr_wheel()

Examples

corr_wheel_schemes()

Synthetic gastric-symptom dataset

Description

A fully simulated dataset (not patient data) mimicking the structure of a gastric-symptom study: demographics, gastric metrics, symptom sub-scales, and summary scores for 100 imaginary subjects, one row per subject. Loadings are deliberately moderate and uneven, so only a realistic subset of correlations is significant. Generated by data-raw/make_example_data.R.

Usage

gastro_symptoms

Format

A data frame with 100 rows and 16 variables:

Age, BMI

Demographics.

Amplitude, Fed-Fasted AR, Frequency, GA-RI

Simulated gastric metrics.

Nausea, Early satiety, Bloating, Upper GI pain, Lower GI pain, Heartburn

Symptom sub-scale scores.

GCSI, PAGI-SYM, PAGI-QoL, EQ-5D

Summary symptom and quality-of-life scores.

Details

Bundled with the package (LazyData: true), so it is available directly as gastro_symptoms as soon as you library(circlecorR) – no data() call needed. Pass it straight to corr_wheel(); see vignette("circlecorR") for a worked example.

See Also

corr_wheel(), compute_correlations()