Why is geom_smooth not showing in ggplotly?

Question

I am trying to create an interactive scatterplot using ggplotly. This will include a scatterplot with the interactivity to highlight each point's country name, and a line of best fit. However, when I add the text argument to my ggplot (in order to create interactive labels) it removes the line of best fit. I have tried to isolate the text argument to just the geom_point function, as suggested in a previous stack overflow post, but this does not solve the issue.

Would someone be able to offer a solution?

Thanks in advance.

My data includes a column for country name, a column for its gdp and a column for its world happiness index score ranging from 1 - 8.

Just as a randomly generated example:

NAME	gdp	happiness_score
Argentina	10000	6
Canada	600000	8

My code is as follows:

library(ggplot2)
library(plotly)
library(dplyr)
library(readr)
library(lubridate)
library(stringr)
library(ggthemes)
library(extrafont)
library(htmlwidgets)

font = list(
  family = "DM Sans",
  size = 15,
  color = "white"
)

label = list(
  bgcolor = "#232F34",
  bordercolor = "transparent",
  font = font
)

#create base graph
scatter_gdp <- ggplot(scatterdf, aes(x = gdp, y = happiness_score)) + 
  geom_point(colour = '#005a32', alpha = 0.6,  text = NAME) +
  geom_smooth(method = 'lm', se = FALSE, colour = 'red', alpha = 0.6)
  
#format themes
scatter_gdp <- scatter_gdp +  
  theme_classic() +
  labs(title = "Relationship Between a Country's GDP and Happiness") +
  xlab("Gross Domestic Produce (US$)") +
  ylab("World Happiness Index Score") +
  theme(
    text = element_text(family="DM Sans"),
    plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5),
    panel.grid.major=element_blank(),
    panel.grid.minor=element_blank()
    ) 

#create ggplotly
graph_gdp.interactive = ggplotly(scatter_gdp, tooltip = 'NAME')%>%
  style(hoverlabel = label) %>%
  layout(font = font, 
         xaxis = list(fixedrange = TRUE), 
         yaxis = list(fixedrange = TRUE)) %>%
  config(displayModeBar = FALSE, showTips = FALSE)

graph_gdp.interactive

Answer 1

You should assign your NAME to the label command in the aes and add a geom_text to show the names to the plots. You can use the following code:

library(ggplot2)
library(plotly)
library(dplyr)
library(readr)
library(lubridate)
library(stringr)
library(ggthemes)
library(extrafont)
library(htmlwidgets)

font = list(
  family = "DM Sans",
  size = 15,
  color = "white"
)

label = list(
  bgcolor = "#232F34",
  bordercolor = "transparent",
  font = font
)

scatterdf <- data.frame(NAME = c("Argentina", "Canada", "France"),
                        gdp = c(10000, 600000, 1000000),
                        happiness_score = c(6,8, 8))

#create base graph
scatter_gdp <- ggplot(scatterdf, aes(x = gdp, y = happiness_score, label = NAME)) + 
  geom_point(colour = '#005a32', alpha = 0.6) +
  geom_smooth(method = 'lm', se = FALSE, colour = 'red', alpha = 0.6) +
  geom_text(hjust=0, vjust=0)

#format themes
scatter_gdp <- scatter_gdp +  
  theme_classic() +
  labs(title = "Relationship Between a Country's GDP and Happiness") +
  xlab("Gross Domestic Produce (US$)") +
  ylab("World Happiness Index Score") +
  theme(
    text = element_text(family="DM Sans"),
    plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5),
    panel.grid.major=element_blank(),
    panel.grid.minor=element_blank()
  ) 

#create ggplotly
graph_gdp.interactive = ggplotly(scatter_gdp, tooltip = 'NAME')%>%
  style(hoverlabel = label) %>%
  layout(font = font, 
         xaxis = list(fixedrange = TRUE), 
         yaxis = list(fixedrange = TRUE)) %>%
  config(displayModeBar = FALSE, showTips = FALSE)

graph_gdp.interactive

Output: