How to increase the space between the bars in a bar plot in ggplot2?
RGgplot2R Problem Overview
How can I increase the space between the bars in a bar plot in ggplot2 ?
R Solutions
Solution 1 - R
You can always play with the width
parameter, as shown below:
df <- data.frame(x=factor(LETTERS[1:4]), y=sample(1:100, 4))
library(ggplot2)
ggplot(data=df, aes(x=x, y=y, width=.5)) +
geom_bar(stat="identity", position="identity") +
opts(title="width = .5") + labs(x="", y="") +
theme_bw()
Compare with the following other settings for width
:
So far, so good. Now, suppose we have two factors. In case you would like to play with evenly spaced juxtaposed bars (like when using space
together with beside=TRUE
in barplot()
), it's not so easy using geom_bar(position="dodge")
: you can change bar width, but not add space in between adjacent bars (and I didn't find a convenient solution on Google). I ended up with something like that:
df <- data.frame(g=gl(2, 1, labels=letters[1:2]), y=sample(1:100, 4))
x.seq <- c(1,2,4,5)
ggplot(data=transform(df, x=x.seq), aes(x=x, y=y, width=.85)) +
geom_bar(stat="identity", aes(fill=g)) + labs(x="", y="") +
scale_x_discrete(breaks = NA) +
geom_text(aes(x=c(sum(x.seq[1:2])/2, sum(x.seq[3:4])/2), y=0,
label=c("X","Y")), vjust=1.2, size=8)
The vector used for the $x$-axis is "injected" in the data.frame, so that so you change the outer spacing if you want, while width
allows to control for inner spacing. Labels for the $x$-axis might be enhanced by using scale_x_discrete()
.
Solution 2 - R
For space between factor bars use
ggplot(data = d, aes(x=X, y=Y, fill=F))
+ geom_bar(width = 0.8, position = position_dodge(width = 0.9))
The width in geom_bar controls the bar width in relation to the x-axis while the width in position_dodge control the width of the space given to both bars also in relation to the x-axis. Play around with the width to find one that you like.
Solution 3 - R
Thank you very much chl.! I had the same problem and you helped me solving it. Instead of using geom_text to add the X-labels I used scale_x_continuous (see below)
geom_text(aes(x=c(sum(x.seq[1:2])/2, sum(x.seq[3:4])/2), y=0,
label=c("X","Y")), vjust=1.2, size=8)
replaced by
scale_x_continuous(breaks=c(mean(x.seq[1:2]), mean(x.seq[3:4])), labels=c("X", "Y"))
Solution 4 - R
For space between POSIXlt bars you need adjust the width from the number of seconds in a day
# POSIXlt example: full & half width
d <- data.frame(dates = strptime(paste(2016, "01", 1:10, sep = "-"), "%Y-%m-%d"),
values = 1:10)
ggplot(d, aes(dates, values)) +
geom_bar(stat = "identity", width = 60*60*24)
ggplot(d, aes(dates, values)) +
geom_bar(stat = "identity", width = 60*60*24*0.5)