Transform only one axis to log10 scale with ggplot2

Question

I have the following problem  I would like to visualize a discrete and a continuous variable on a boxplot in which the latter has a few extreme high values  This makes the boxplot meaningless  the points and even the  body  of the chart is too small   that is why I would like to show this on a log10 scale  I am aware that I could leave out the extreme values from the visualization  but I am not intended to   Let s see a simple example with diamonds data   m  lt - ggplot diamonds  aes y   price  x   color       The problem is not serious here  but I hope you could imagine why I would like to see the values at a log10 scale  Let s try it   m   geom boxplot     coord trans y    log10       As you can see the y axis is log10 scaled and looks fine but there is a problem with the x axis  which makes the plot very strange   The problem do not occur with scale log  but this is not an option for me  as I cannot use a custom formatter this way  E g    m   geom boxplot     scale y log10        My question  does anyone know a solution to plot the boxplot with log10 scale on y axis which labels could be freely formatted with a formatter function like in this thread      Editing the question to help answerers based on answers and comments   What I am really after  one log10 transformed axis  y  with not scientific labels  I would like to label it like dollar  formatter dollar  or any custom format   If I try  hadley s suggestion I get the following warnings    gt  m   geom boxplot     scale y log10 formatter dollar  Warning messages  1  In max x    no non-missing arguments to max  returning -Inf 2  In max x    no non-missing arguments to max  returning -Inf 3  In max x    no non-missing arguments to max  returning -Inf   With an unchanged y axis labels

User · Answer

I had a similar problem and this scale worked for me like a charm:

breaks = 10**(1:10)
scale_y_log10(breaks = breaks, labels = comma(breaks))

as you want the intermediate levels, too (10^3.5), you need to tweak the formatting:

breaks = 10**(1:10 * 0.5)
m <- ggplot(diamonds, aes(y = price, x = color)) + geom_boxplot()
m + scale_y_log10(breaks = breaks, labels = comma(breaks, digits = 1))

After executing::

enter image description here

User · Answer

The simplest is to just give the  trans   formerly  formatter  argument the name of the log function   m   geom boxplot     scale y continuous trans  log10     EDIT  Or if you don t like that  then either of these appears to give different but useful results   m  lt - ggplot diamonds  aes y   price  x   color   log  y   m   geom boxplot    m  lt - ggplot diamonds  aes y   price  x   color   log10  y   m   geom boxplot     EDIT2  amp  3  Further experiments  after discarding the one that attempted successfully to put     signs in front of logged values    fmtExpLg10  lt - function x  paste round any 10 x 1000  0 01     K     sep     ggplot diamonds  aes color  log10 price         geom boxplot        scale y continuous  Price  log10-scaling   trans   fmtExpLg10      Note added mid 2017 in comment about package syntax change       scale y continuous formatter    log10   is now scale y continuous trans    log10    ggplot2 v2 2 1

User · Answer

Another solution using scale y log10 with trans breaks  trans format and annotation logticks      library ggplot2   m  lt - ggplot diamonds  aes y   price  x   color    m   geom boxplot       scale y log10      breaks   scales  trans breaks  log10   function x  10 x       labels   scales  trans format  log10   scales  math format 10  x           theme bw       annotation logticks sides    lr       theme panel grid minor   element blank

User · Answer

I think I got it at last by doing some manual transformations with the data before visualization   d  lt - diamonds   computing logarithm of prices d price  lt - log10 d price    And work out a formatter to later compute  back  the logarithmic data   formatBack  lt - function x  10 x    or with special formatter  here   dollar   formatBack  lt - function x  paste round 10 x  2        sep         And draw the plot with given formatter   m  lt - ggplot d  aes y   price  x   color   m   geom boxplot     scale y continuous formatter  formatBack       Sorry to the community to bother you with a question I could have solved before  The funny part is  I was working hard to make this plot work a month ago but did not succeed  After asking here  I got it   Anyway  thanks to  DWin for motivation

[r] Transform only one axis to log10 scale with ggplot2

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