Order Bars in ggplot2 bar graph

Question

I am trying to make a bar graph where the largest bar would be nearest to the y axis and the shortest bar would be furthest  So this is kind of like the Table I have      Name   Position 1   James  Goalkeeper 2   Frank  Goalkeeper 3   Jean   Defense 4   Steve  Defense 5   John   Defense 6   Tim    Striker   So I am trying to build a bar graph that would show the number of players according to position  p  lt - ggplot theTable  aes x   Position     geom bar binwidth   1    but the graph shows the goalkeeper bar first then the defense  and finally the striker one  I would want the graph to be ordered so that the defense bar is closest to the y axis  the goalkeeper one  and finally the striker one  Thanks

User · Answer

Another alternative using reorder to order the levels of a factor  In ascending  n  or descending order  -n  based on the count  Very similar to the one using fct reorder from the forcats package   Descending order  df   gt     count Position    gt     ggplot aes x   reorder Position  -n   y   n       geom bar stat    identity       xlab  Position      Ascending order  df   gt     count Position    gt     ggplot aes x   reorder Position  n   y   n       geom bar stat    identity       xlab  Position      Data frame   df  lt - structure list Position   structure c 3L  3L  1L  1L  1L  2L    Label   c  Defense     Striker    Zoalkeeper    class    factor    Name   structure c 2L   1L  3L  5L  4L  6L    Label   c  Frank    James    Jean    John     Steve    Tim    class    factor     class    data frame   row names   c NA   -6L

User · Answer

you can simply use this code  ggplot yourdatasetname  aes Position  fill   Name           geom bar col    quot black quot   size   2

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I found it very annoying that ggplot2 doesn t offer an  automatic  solution for this  That s why I created the bar chart   function in ggcharts   ggcharts  bar chart theTable  Position      By default bar chart   sorts the bars and displays a horizontal plot  To change that set  horizontal   FALSE  In addition  bar chart   removes the unsightly  gap  between the bars and the axis

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I agree with zach that counting within dplyr is the best solution  I ve found this to be the shortest version   dplyr  count theTable  Position    gt             arrange -n    gt             mutate Position   factor Position  Position     gt             ggplot aes x Position  y n     geom bar stat  identity     This will also be significantly faster than reordering the factor levels beforehand since the count is done in dplyr not in ggplot or using table

User · Answer

Using scale x discrete  limits        to specify the order of bars   positions  lt - c  Goalkeeper    Defense    Striker   p  lt - ggplot theTable  aes x   Position     scale x discrete limits   positions

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You just need to specify the Position column to be an ordered factor where the levels are ordered by their counts   theTable  lt - transform  theTable         Position   ordered Position  levels   names  sort -table Position         Note that the table Position  produces a frequency-count of the Position column    Then your ggplot function will show the bars in decreasing order of count  I don t know if there s an option in geom bar to do this without having to explicitly create an ordered factor

User · Answer

Like reorder   in Alex Brown s answer  we could also use forcats  fct reorder    It will basically sort the factors specified in the 1st arg  according to the values in the 2nd arg after applying a specified function  default   median  which is what we use here as just have one value per factor level    It is a shame that in the OP s question  the order required is also alphabetical as that is the default sort order when you create factors  so will hide what this function is actually doing  To make it more clear  I ll replace  Goalkeeper  with  Zoalkeeper    library tidyverse  library forcats   theTable  lt - data frame                  Name   c  James    Frank    Jean    Steve    John    Tim                    Position   c  Zoalkeeper    Zoalkeeper    Defense                                 Defense    Defense    Striker     theTable   gt       count Position    gt       mutate Position   fct reorder Position  n   desc   TRUE     gt       ggplot aes x   Position  y   n     geom bar stat    identity

User · Answer

Since we are only looking at the distribution of a single variable   Position   as opposed to looking at the relationship between two variables  then perhaps a histogram would be the more appropriate graph  ggplot has geom histogram   that makes it easy   ggplot theTable  aes x   Position     geom histogram stat  count       Using geom histogram     I think geom histogram   is a little quirky as it treats continuous and discrete data differently    For continuous data  you can just use geom histogram   with no parameters  For example  if we add in a numeric vector  Score          Name   Position   Score   1   James  Goalkeeper 10 2   Frank  Goalkeeper 20 3   Jean   Defense    10 4   Steve  Defense    10 5   John   Defense    20 6   Tim    Striker    50   and use geom histogram   on the  Score  variable     ggplot theTable  aes x   Score     geom histogram       For discrete data like  Position  we have to specify a calculated statistic computed by the aesthetic to give the y value for the height of the bars using stat    count     ggplot theTable  aes x   Position     geom histogram stat    count     Note  Curiously and confusingly you can also use stat    count  for continuous data as well and I think it provides a more aesthetically pleasing graph   ggplot theTable  aes x   Score     geom histogram stat    count       Edits  Extended answer in response to DebanjanB s helpful suggestions

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A simple dplyr based reordering of factors can solve this problem   library dplyr    reorder the table and reset the factor to that ordering theTable   gt     group by Position    gt                                  calculate the counts   summarize counts   n      gt     arrange -counts    gt                                    sort by counts   mutate Position   factor Position  Position     gt       reset factor   ggplot aes x Position  y counts                       plot      geom bar stat  identity                             plot histogram

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I think the already provided solutions are overly verbose  A more concise way to do a frequency sorted barplot with ggplot is  ggplot theTable  aes x reorder Position  -table Position  Position       geom bar     It s similar to what Alex Brown suggested  but a bit shorter and works without an anynymous function definition   Update  I think my old solution was good at the time  but nowadays I d rather use forcats  fct infreq which is sorting factor levels by frequency   require forcats   ggplot theTable  aes fct infreq Position      geom bar

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In addition to forcats  fct infreq  mentioned by   HolgerBrandl  there is forcats  fct rev  which reverses the factor order   theTable  lt - data frame      Position           c  Zoalkeeper    Zoalkeeper    Defense              Defense    Defense    Striker        Name c  James    Frank   Jean               Steve   John    Tim     p1  lt - ggplot theTable  aes x   Position     geom bar   p2  lt - ggplot theTable  aes x   fct infreq Position      geom bar   p3  lt - ggplot theTable  aes x   fct rev fct infreq Position       geom bar    gridExtra  grid arrange p1  p2  p3  nrow 3

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If the chart columns come from a numeric variable as in the dataframe below  you can use a simpler solution   ggplot df  aes x   reorder Colors  -Qty  sum   y   Qty      geom bar stat    identity       The minus sign before the sort variable  -Qty  controls the sort direction  ascending descending   Here s some data for testing   df  lt - data frame Colors   c  Green   Yellow   Blue   Red   Yellow   Blue                       Qty   c 7 4 5 1 3 6                       Sample data      Colors Qty 1  Green   7 2 Yellow   4 3   Blue   5 4    Red   1 5 Yellow   3 6   Blue   6   When I found this thread  that was the answer I was looking for  Hope it s useful for others

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GavinSimpson  reorder is a powerful and effective solution for this   ggplot theTable         aes x reorder Position Position                       function x -length x              geom bar

User · Answer

The key with ordering is to set the levels of the factor in the order you want  An ordered factor is not required  the extra information in an ordered factor isn t necessary and if these data are being used in any statistical model  the wrong parametrisation might result  mdash  polynomial contrasts aren t right for nominal data such as this      set the levels in order we want theTable  lt - within theTable                      Position  lt - factor Position                                         levels names sort table Position                                                            decreasing TRUE        plot ggplot theTable aes x Position   geom bar binwidth 1      In the most general sense  we simply need to set the factor levels to be in the desired order  If left unspecified  the levels of a factor will be sorted alphabetically  You can also specify the level order within the call to factor as above  and other ways are possible as well   theTable Position  lt - factor theTable Position  levels   c

[r] Order Bars in ggplot2 bar graph

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