CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rggplot2
komodovaran_
komodovaran_

Reputation: 2012

Coloring facets of histograms in ggplot by grouping variable

I thought this would be an easy one, but not quite so.

I have my code for some histograms in facets. They can follow the standard color theme no problem, but if I want to have them follow a palette (which works fine for e.g. a single scatterplot with dots from different groups) everything goes haywire.

And where the heck does the red come in?

Data here: https://pastebin.com/0p7SP005

library(ggplot2)
library(ggthemes)

ggplot(data = point_list, aes(x = lifetime,
                              y = ..density..)) +
    geom_histogram() +
    aes(fill = as.factor(cluster),
        col = "black") + 
    scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0,0)) +
    scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0,0)) +
    coord_cartesian(xlim = c(-2.6,50),
                    ylim = c(0,0.16)) +
    theme_tufte(base_size = 11, base_family = "Helvetica") +
    theme(axis.text = element_text(color = "black"),
          panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black", fill=NA, size=0.7),
          legend.position = "none") +
    facet_wrap(~cluster, scales = "free", ) +
    scale_color_brewer(palette = "Set1")

enter image description here

For reference, Set1 should look like this: enter image description here

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2954

Answers (2)

Z.Lin
Z.Lin

Reputation: 29125

I'll illustrate the point about why the bars' outlines were red, since everything else has been covered already.

In your code, you had col = "black" inside the aesthetic mapping function, which meant that color (used for outlines) is mapped to a variable. "black" in this case would be interpreted as a factor with 1 level. Since your code also includes scale_color_brewer(palette = "Set1"), the resulting color is the first color from the Set1 palette, i.e. bright red.

(The actual word didn't matter; if you had col = "white" or anything like that, it would make no difference at all.)

If you had chosen a different palette, the outline color would be different too. For example:

ggplot(data = point_list, aes(x = lifetime,
                              y = ..density..)) +
  geom_histogram(size = 3) + # thicker outline to make the color more obvious
  aes(fill = as.factor(cluster),
      col = "black") + 
  scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0,0)) +
  scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0,0)) +
  coord_cartesian(xlim = c(-2.6,50),
                  ylim = c(0,0.16)) +
  # theme_tufte(base_size = 11, base_family = "Helvetica") + #commenting this out since I don't have this theme
  theme(axis.text = element_text(color = "black"),
        panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black", fill=NA, size=0.7),
        legend.position = "none") +
  facet_wrap(~cluster, scales = "free", ) +
  scale_color_brewer(palette = "Set2")

example

The first color from the Set2 palette is pale-ish green (#66c2a5), which is what we see here.

To get black outlines, follow loki's answer above to specify the color in geom_histogram, and make sure you do it outside aes() this time. :)

Upvotes: 3

loki
loki

Reputation: 10350

If you want to change the red to black just change your geom_histogram line to:

geom_histogram(color = "black")

enter image description here

Upvotes: 2

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