Several ggdist functions support automatic partial application: when called, if all of their required arguments have not been provided, the function returns a modified version of itself that uses the arguments passed to it so far as defaults. Technically speaking, these functions are essentially "Curried" with respect to their required arguments, but I think "automatic partial application" gets the idea across more clearly.

Functions supporting automatic partial application include:

Partial application makes it easier to supply custom parameters to these functions when using them inside other functions, such as geoms and stats. For example, smoothers for geom_dots() can be supplied in one of three ways:

  • as a suffix: geom_dots(smooth = "bounded")

  • as a function: geom_dots(smooth = smooth_bounded)

  • as a partially-applied function with options: geom_dots(smooth = smooth_bounded(kernel = "cosine"))

The density argument to stat_slabinterval() works similarly with the density_ family of functions.

Examples

set.seed(1234)
x = rnorm(100)

# the first required argument, `x`, of the density_ family is the vector
# to calculate a kernel density estimate from. If it is not provided, the
# function is partially applied and returned as-is
density_unbounded()
#> <partial_function>: 
#>   density_unbounded()

# we could create a new function that uses half the default bandwidth
density_half_bw = density_unbounded(adjust = 0.5)
density_half_bw
#> <partial_function>: 
#>   density_unbounded(adjust = 0.5)

# we can overwrite partially-applied arguments
density_quarter_bw_trimmed = density_half_bw(adjust = 0.25, trim = TRUE)
density_quarter_bw_trimmed
#> <partial_function>: 
#>   density_unbounded(adjust = 0.25, trim = TRUE)

# when we eventually call the function and provide the required argument
# `x`, it is applied using the arguments we have "saved up" so far
density_quarter_bw_trimmed(x)
#> 
#> Call:
#> 	density_unbounded(x = x, adjust = 0.25, trim = TRUE)
#> 
#> Data: x (100 obs.);	Bandwidth 'bw' = 0.08864
#> 
#>        x                 y           
#>  Min.   :-2.3457   Min.   :0.009921  
#>  1st Qu.:-1.1220   1st Qu.:0.062906  
#>  Median : 0.1016   Median :0.149478  
#>  Mean   : 0.1016   Mean   :0.201970  
#>  3rd Qu.: 1.3253   3rd Qu.:0.337508  
#>  Max.   : 2.5490   Max.   :0.673160