Customizing boxplots with ggplot2
Boxplot is probably one of the most common type of graphics. This will show how to customize boxplots.
You will learn,
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how to change the order of labels
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how to change the colours
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how to flip coordinates
Step 1: we create a simple data set.
Gender <- rep(c("Male", "Female"), times = 3, each = 4)
Quality <- rep(c("Taste", "Color of package", "Capacity"), times = 1, each = 8)
Accepted <- seq(0, 100, by = 100/23)
DF <- data.frame(Gender, Quality, Accepted)
head(DF)
## Gender Quality Accepted
## 1 Male Taste 0.000000
## 2 Male Taste 4.347826
## 3 Male Taste 8.695652
## 4 Male Taste 13.043478
## 5 Female Taste 17.391304
## 6 Female Taste 21.739130
Step 2: Generate a simple boxplot with ggplot
library(ggplot2)
ggplot(DF, aes(x = Quality, y = Accepted, fill = Gender)) +
geom_boxplot()
Step 3: Change the colours, legend position and x-axis order
ggplot(DF, aes(x = Quality, y = Accepted, fill = Gender)) +
geom_boxplot() +
scale_fill_manual(values = c("green", "orange")) +
xlab("") +
theme(legend.position = "top", legend.title = element_blank()) +
scale_x_discrete(limits=c("Taste", "Color of package", "Capacity"))
Step 4: Change the plotting order: first you have to include factor code to set the order of the levels.
DF$Gender_factor <- factor(DF$Gender, levels=c("Male", "Female"))
ggplot(DF, aes(x = Quality, y = Accepted, fill = Gender_factor)) +
geom_boxplot() +
scale_fill_manual(values = c("green", "orange")) +
xlab("") +
theme(legend.position = "top", legend.title = element_blank()) +
scale_x_discrete(limits=c("Taste", "Color of package", "Capacity"))
Step 5: Horizontal bar chart: coord_flip()
ggplot(DF, aes(x = Quality, y = Accepted, fill = Gender)) +
geom_boxplot() +
scale_fill_manual(values = c("green", "orange")) +
xlab("") +
theme(legend.position = "top", legend.title = element_blank()) +
coord_flip()+
scale_x_discrete(limits=c("Taste", "Color of package", "Capacity"))
step 6: Change the legend order similar to plot order: under themes fill=guide_legend(reverse=FALSE)
ggplot(DF, aes(x = Quality, y = Accepted, fill = Gender)) +
geom_boxplot() +
scale_fill_manual(values = c("green", "orange")) +
xlab("") +
theme(legend.position = "top", legend.title = element_blank()) +
guides(fill=guide_legend(reverse=TRUE)) +
coord_flip()+
scale_x_discrete(limits=c("Taste", "Color of package", "Capacity"))
