CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rggplot2bar-chart
chris17
chris17

Reputation: 27

R ggplot specific order of bars

So, I am doing several descending ordered barplots in R using ggplot. Each of these plots contains one bar named "others", which should always the last bar. How to realize this optimally? More generally: Is there an easy possibility to pick one bar of a bar plot and move it to the last position without manually changing all levels.

Many thanks in advance, chris

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1494

Answers (1)

Brandon Bertelsen
Brandon Bertelsen

Reputation: 44708

The trick is to use factor, as follows

library(ggplot2) # for plots
# dummy data
dat <- data.frame(
  letters = c("A","B","Other","X","Y","Z"),
  probs = sample(runif(6)*10,6)
)

# not what we want
ggplot(dat, aes(letters, probs)) + geom_bar(stat = "identity") 

# magic happens here
# factor, and push Other to end of levels using c(others, other)
dat$letters <- factor(
  dat$letters, 
  levels = c(
    levels(dat$letters)[!levels(dat$letters) == "Other"], 
    "Other") 
  )

ggplot(dat, aes(letters, probs)) + geom_bar(stat = "identity")

If you're using + coord_flip(), use levels = rev(c(...)) for intuitive ordering

dat$letters <- factor(
  dat$letters, 
  levels = rev(c(
    levels(dat$letters)[!levels(dat$letters) == "Other"], 
    "Other")) 
  )

ggplot(dat, aes(letters, probs)) + geom_bar(stat = "identity") + coord_flip()

Upvotes: 1

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