If you've visited the CRAN repository of R packages lately, you might have noticed that the number of available packages has now topped a dizzying 18,000+. This means there are packages for practically any data visualization task you can imagine, from visualizing cancer genomes to graphing the action of a book.

For new R coders, or anyone looking to hone their R data viz chops, CRAN's repository may seem like an embarrassment of riches-there are so many data viz packages out there, it's hard to know where to start.

To provide one path through the labyrinth, we're giving an overview of 9 useful interdisciplinary R data visualization packages. Mode R Notebooks support three libraries on this list - ggplot2, Lattice, and Plotly - and more than 60 others that you can explore on our Notebook support page.