How to order breaks with ggplot / geom_bar

Question

I have a data.frame with entries like:

   variable  importance order
1       foo  0.06977263     1
2       bar  0.05532474     2
3       baz  0.03589902     3
4     alpha  0.03552195     4
5      beta  0.03489081     5
       ...

When plotting the above, with the breaks = variable, I would like for the order to be preserved, rather than placed in alphabetical order.

I am rendering with:

 
ggplot (data, aes(x=variable, weight=importance, fill=variable)) + 
    geom_bar() + 
    coord_flip() + opts(legend.position='none')

However, the ordering of the variable names is alphabetical, and not the order within the data frame. I had seen a post about using "order" in aes, but appears to have no effect.

I am looking to have a breaks ordering in-line with the "order" column.

There seems to be a similar question How to change the order of discrete x scale in ggplot, but frankly, did not understand the answer in this context.

FYI: It's easier for people to answer if you use dput and add a small sample of the data to the end of your post (or else use a globally available dataset from the datasets package in base R). — Shane
– Shane, Commented Oct 22, 2010 at 20:33
variable is a factor. I'm going to look at the answers below ... — Jonathan Shore
– Jonathan Shore, Commented Oct 22, 2010 at 23:15

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:34:30Z

7

Try:

data$variable <- factor(data$variable, levels=levels(data$variable)[order(-data$order)])

From: ggplot2 sorting a plot Part II

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:34

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answered Oct 22, 2010 at 20:45

Brandon Bertelsen

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Xavier Guardiola · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-15 13:10:23Z

4

Even shorter and easier to understand:

data$Variable <- reorder(data$Variable, data$order)

answered Feb 15, 2011 at 13:10

Xavier Guardiola

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Shane · Accepted Answer · 2010-10-22 21:04:54Z

2

Another solution is to plot the order and then change the labels after the fact:

df <- data.frame(variable=letters[c(3,3,2,5,1)], importance=rnorm(5), order=1:5)
p <- qplot(x=order, weight=importance, fill=variable, data=df, geom="bar") + 
  scale_x_continuous("", breaks=1:5, labels=df$variable) + 
  coord_flip() + opts(legend.position='none')

answered Oct 22, 2010 at 21:04

Shane

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1 Comment

Jonathan Shore Over a year ago

Thanks. This solves it. Wish there was a built-in approach with an order attribute, but I suppose would not be a widely used feature.

Joshua Ulrich · Accepted Answer · 2010-10-22 20:50:27Z

1

A shot in the dark, but maybe something like this:

data$variable <- factor(data$variable, levels=data$variable)

answered Oct 22, 2010 at 20:50

Joshua Ulrich

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