CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rggplot2patchwork
tassones
tassones

Reputation: 1692

How do I overlap figure axes and extend one axes title across two axes in ggplot?

I have a figure that includes four plots. All y-axis are Temperature and the two x-axis are Time1 and Time2. I am stacking and aligning all four plots into a 2x2 figure using the patchwork package and plot_layout() function in R. Since, all y-axes are the same variable, I only want to show one y-axis title on the left side of the plot, but I can't figured out how to do this. I also want to cover-up the y-axes on the two plots in the right column, but when I move the figures, the right column overlaps the left column (I want the opposite).

Here is an example of what I have done so far.

library(ggplot2)
library(patchwork)

df1 <- data.frame(x1 = rnorm(20), y1 = rnorm(20))
df2 <- data.frame(x2 = rnorm(20), y2 = rnorm(20))
df3 <- data.frame(x3 = rnorm(20), y3 = rnorm(20))
df4 <- data.frame(x4 = rnorm(20), y4 = rnorm(20))

p1 <- ggplot(data = df1, aes(x = x1, y = y1)) +
  geom_point() +
  ylab("Temperature") +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(panel.grid = element_blank(),
           plot.margin = unit(c(0,0,0,0),"cm"))

p2 <- ggplot(data = df2, aes(x = x2, y = y2)) +
  geom_point() +
  ylab("Temperature") +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(panel.grid = element_blank(),
        plot.margin = unit(c(0,0,0,0),"cm"))

p3 <- ggplot(data = df3, aes(x = x3, y = y3)) +
  geom_point() +
  xlab("Time1") +
  ylab("Temperature") +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(panel.grid = element_blank(),
        plot.margin = unit(c(-0.5,0,0,0),"cm"))

p4 <- ggplot(data = df4, aes(x = x4, y = y4)) +
  geom_point() +
  xlab("Time2") +
  ylab("Temperature") +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(panel.grid = element_blank(),
        plot.margin = unit(c(-0.5,0,0,0),"cm"))

p5 <- p1/p2/p3/p4 + plot_layout(ncol = 2, heights = c(1,1))
p5

Which produces this figure: enter image description here

However, I would ultimately like the figure to look something like this: enter image description here

Upvotes: 0

Views: 607

Answers (1)

Ian Campbell
Ian Campbell

Reputation: 24818

How about using a facet_grid? We'll need to do some data cleanup first though:

library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
libary(ggplot2)
df1 <- data.frame(Sample = 1, Time1 = rnorm(20), y = rnorm(20))
df2 <- data.frame(Sample = 1, Time2 = rnorm(20), y = rnorm(20))
df3 <- data.frame(Sample = 2, Time1 = rnorm(20), y = rnorm(20))
df4 <- data.frame(Sample = 2, Time2 = rnorm(20), y = rnorm(20)) 

data <- bind_rows(mget(ls(pattern = "df[0-9]"))) %>%
  pivot_longer(cols = c(-y,-Sample), 
               names_to = "Time",
               values_to = "x") %>%
  dplyr::filter(complete.cases(.))
data
## A tibble: 80 x 4
#   Sample       y Time       x
#    <dbl>   <dbl> <chr>  <dbl>
# 1      1 -0.449  Time1  0.768
# 2      1 -1.10   Time1  0.410
# 3      1 -0.529  Time1 -1.98 
# 4      1 -0.485  Time1 -1.09 
# 5      1  0.128  Time1  1.06 
## … with 75 more rows

Now that we have the data in the correct form, we can facet_wrap by Time:


ggplot(data = data, aes(x = x, y = y)) +
  geom_point() +
  ylab("Temperature") +
  xlab(element_blank()) + 
  facet_grid(cols = vars(Time), rows = vars(Sample), scales = "free",switch = "both") + 
  theme_bw() +
  theme(panel.grid = element_blank(),
           plot.margin = unit(c(0,0,0,0),"cm"),
        strip.background = element_blank(),
        strip.placement = "outside", strip.text.y = element_blank())

enter image description here

Note that there is no way to have a free y-axis within the same row nor free x-axis within the same column.

Upvotes: 2

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