Adding space between bars in ggplot2

Question

I'd like to add spaces between bars in ggplot2. This page offers one solution: How to increase the space between the bars in a bar plot in ggplot2?. Instead of using factor levels for the x-axis groupings, however, this solution creates a numeric sequence, x.seq, to manually place the bars and then scales them using the width() argument. width() doesn't work, however, when I use factor level groupings for the x-axis as in the example, below.

library(ggplot2)

Treatment <- rep(c('T','C'),each=2)
Gender <- rep(c('M','F'),2)
Response <- sample(1:100,4)
df <- data.frame(Treatment, Gender, Response)

hist <- ggplot(df, aes(x=Gender, y=Response, fill=Treatment, stat="identity"))
hist + geom_bar(position = "dodge") + scale_y_continuous(limits = c(0, 
    100), name = "")

Does anyone know how to get the same effect as in the linked example, but while using factor level groupings?

Also of note is the usefulness of facetting + facet_grid(~Treatment) — Brandon Bertelsen
– Brandon Bertelsen, Commented May 22, 2011 at 4:57

kohske · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-22 01:06:14Z

97

Is this what you want?

hist + geom_bar(width=0.4, position = position_dodge(width=0.5))

width in geom_bar determines the width of the bar.
width in position_dodge determines the position of each bar.

Probably you can easily understand their behavior after you play with them for a while.

enter image description here

answered May 22, 2011 at 1:06

kohske

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4 Comments

krlmlr Over a year ago

width in geom_histogram() is deprecated in modern ggplot2 (>= 2.1.0).

user5359531 Over a year ago

what if I want to keep the bars per-group together (e.g. the 'C' and 'T' bars here) but want to change the spacing between groups ('M' and 'F' here)?

Kastany Over a year ago

Regarding the question by user5359531, see here: stackoverflow.com/questions/51892875/…

GMSL Over a year ago

As kohske didn't describe how they work: width in geom_bar is the width of x-axis bar groups. width in position_dodge is the width of bars within each x-axis group. A width of "1" means that bars/groups touch each other. Widths < 1 adds space between bars or between groups.

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