[r] Plotting multiple time series on the same plot using ggplot()

I am fairly new to R and am attempting to plot two time series lines simultaneously (using different colors, of course) making use of ggplot2.

I have 2 data frames. the first one has 'Percent change for X' and 'Date' columns. The second one has 'Percent change for Y' and 'Date' columns as well, i.e., both have a 'Date' column with the same values whereas the 'Percent Change' columns have different values.

I would like to plot the 'Percent Change' columns against 'Date' (common to both) using ggplot2 on a single plot.

The examples that I found online made use of the same data frame with different variables to achieve this, I have not been able to find anything that makes use of 2 data frames to get to the plot. I do not want to bind the two data frames together, I want to keep them separate. Here is the code that I am using:

ggplot(jobsAFAM, aes(x=jobsAFAM$data_date, y=jobsAFAM$Percent.Change)) + geom_line() +
  xlab("") + ylab("")

But this code produces only one line and I would like to add another line on top of it. Any help would be much appreciated. TIA.

This is old, just update new tidyverse workflow not mentioned above.

library(tidyverse)

jobsAFAM1 <- tibble(
    date = seq.Date(from = as.Date('2017-01-01'),by = 'day', length.out = 5),
    Percent.Change = runif(5, 0,1)
    ) %>% 
    mutate(serial='jobsAFAM1')
jobsAFAM2 <- tibble(
    date = seq.Date(from = as.Date('2017-01-01'),by = 'day', length.out = 5),
    Percent.Change = runif(5, 0,1)
    ) %>% 
    mutate(serial='jobsAFAM2')
jobsAFAM <- bind_rows(jobsAFAM1, jobsAFAM2)

ggplot(jobsAFAM, aes(x=date, y=Percent.Change, col=serial)) + geom_line()

@Chris Njuguna

tidyr::gather() is the one in tidyverse workflow to turn wide dataframe to long tidy layout, then ggplot could plot multiple serials.

I prefer using the ggfortify library. It is a ggplot2 wrapper that recognizes the type of object inside the autoplot function and chooses the best ggplot methods to plot. At least I don't have to remember the syntax of ggplot2.

library(ggfortify)
ts1 <- 1:100
ts2 <- 1:100*0.8
autoplot(ts( cbind(ts1, ts2)  , start = c(2010,5), frequency = 12 ),
         facets = FALSE)

If both data frames have the same column names then you should add one data frame inside ggplot() call and also name x and y values inside aes() of ggplot() call. Then add first geom_line() for the first line and add second geom_line() call with data=df2 (where df2 is your second data frame). If you need to have lines in different colors then add color= and name for eahc line inside aes() of each geom_line().

df1<-data.frame(x=1:10,y=rnorm(10))
df2<-data.frame(x=1:10,y=rnorm(10))

ggplot(df1,aes(x,y))+geom_line(aes(color="First line"))+
  geom_line(data=df2,aes(color="Second line"))+
  labs(color="Legend text")

I know this is old but it is still relevant. You can take advantage of reshape2::melt to change the dataframe into a more friendly structure for ggplot2.

Advantages:

• allows you plot any number of lines
• each line with a different color
• adds a legend for each line
• with only one call to ggplot/geom_line

Disadvantage:

• an extra package(reshape2) required
• melting is not so intuitive at first

For example:

jobsAFAM1 <- data.frame(
  data_date = seq.Date(from = as.Date('2017-01-01'),by = 'day', length.out = 100),
  Percent.Change = runif(5,1,100)
)

jobsAFAM2 <- data.frame(
  data_date = seq.Date(from = as.Date('2017-01-01'),by = 'day', length.out = 100),
  Percent.Change = runif(5,1,100)
)

jobsAFAM <- merge(jobsAFAM1, jobsAFAM2, by="data_date")

jobsAFAMMelted <- reshape2::melt(jobsAFAM, id.var='data_date')

ggplot(jobsAFAMMelted, aes(x=data_date, y=value, col=variable)) + geom_line()

An alternative is to bind the dataframes, and assign them the type of variable they represent. This will let you use the full dataset in a tidier way

library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)

df1 <- data.frame(dates = 1:10,Variable = rnorm(mean = 0.5,10))
df2 <- data.frame(dates = 1:10,Variable = rnorm(mean = -0.5,10))

df3 <- df1 %>%
  mutate(Type = 'a') %>%
  bind_rows(df2 %>%
              mutate(Type = 'b'))


ggplot(df3,aes(y = Variable,x = dates,color = Type)) + 
  geom_line()