CODEWITHSUNDEEP
r
RStudiooo
RStudiooo

Reputation: 1

Bins vs. Breaks

I'm new to coding (Particularly R) and wanted to know what the differences between

Breaks =

vs.

Bins()

are and in what scenarios you would use one over the other.

Thanks in advance for the clarification!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 103

Answers (1)

Shawn Hemelstrand
Shawn Hemelstrand

Reputation: 3228

If this is in relation to something like histograms in ggplot2, the bins arguments automatically stack your data into a set number of columns, whereas the breaks arguments specify where exactly that is. As an example, we can look at these two plots:

#### Automatically Separates into Bins ####
iris %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x=Sepal.Length))+
  geom_histogram(bins = 10)

#### Manually Inserts Breaks at Designated Spots ####
iris %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x=Sepal.Length))+
  geom_histogram(breaks=c(1,2,3,4,5,
                          6,7,8,9,10))

The first automatically got assigned 10 bins (columns) like below:

enter image description here

Since the data deals with decimal values and is bounded between 4.3 and 7.9, the second manual 10 breaks at numbers 1 to 10 (explicitly I'm saying "I want Sepal Length 1 to 10") doesn't end up looking the same:

enter image description here

If I want to set it at much more precise locations, I can do this instead with the breaks argument:

iris %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x=Sepal.Length))+
  geom_histogram(breaks=c(4.0,
                          4.3,
                          5.0,
                          5.3,
                          6.0,
                          6.3,
                          7.0,
                          7.3,
                          8.0))

enter image description here

Upvotes: 1

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