ggplot2 (version 2.2.1)

geom_dotplot: Dot plot

Description

In a dot plot, the width of a dot corresponds to the bin width (or maximum width, depending on the binning algorithm), and dots are stacked, with each dot representing one observation.

Usage

geom_dotplot(mapping = NULL, data = NULL, position = "identity", ..., binwidth = NULL, binaxis = "x", method = "dotdensity", binpositions = "bygroup", stackdir = "up", stackratio = 1, dotsize = 1, stackgroups = FALSE, origin = NULL, right = TRUE, width = 0.9, drop = FALSE, na.rm = FALSE, show.legend = NA, inherit.aes = TRUE)

Arguments

mapping
Set of aesthetic mappings created by aes or aes_. If specified and inherit.aes = TRUE (the default), it is combined with the default mapping at the top level of the plot. You must supply mapping if there is no plot mapping.
data
The data to be displayed in this layer. There are three options:

If NULL, the default, the data is inherited from the plot data as specified in the call to ggplot.

A data.frame, or other object, will override the plot data. All objects will be fortified to produce a data frame. See fortify for which variables will be created.

A function will be called with a single argument, the plot data. The return value must be a data.frame., and will be used as the layer data.

position
Position adjustment, either as a string, or the result of a call to a position adjustment function.
...
other arguments passed on to layer. These are often aesthetics, used to set an aesthetic to a fixed value, like color = "red" or size = 3. They may also be parameters to the paired geom/stat.
binwidth
When method is "dotdensity", this specifies maximum bin width. When method is "histodot", this specifies bin width. Defaults to 1/30 of the range of the data
binaxis
The axis to bin along, "x" (default) or "y"
method
"dotdensity" (default) for dot-density binning, or "histodot" for fixed bin widths (like stat_bin)
binpositions
When method is "dotdensity", "bygroup" (default) determines positions of the bins for each group separately. "all" determines positions of the bins with all the data taken together; this is used for aligning dot stacks across multiple groups.
stackdir
which direction to stack the dots. "up" (default), "down", "center", "centerwhole" (centered, but with dots aligned)
stackratio
how close to stack the dots. Default is 1, where dots just just touch. Use smaller values for closer, overlapping dots.
dotsize
The diameter of the dots relative to binwidth, default 1.
stackgroups
should dots be stacked across groups? This has the effect that position = "stack" should have, but can't (because this geom has some odd properties).
origin
When method is "histodot", origin of first bin
right
When method is "histodot", should intervals be closed on the right (a, b], or not [a, b)
width
When binaxis is "y", the spacing of the dot stacks for dodging.
drop
If TRUE, remove all bins with zero counts
na.rm
If FALSE, the default, missing values are removed with a warning. If TRUE, missing values are silently removed.
show.legend
logical. Should this layer be included in the legends? NA, the default, includes if any aesthetics are mapped. FALSE never includes, and TRUE always includes.
inherit.aes
If FALSE, overrides the default aesthetics, rather than combining with them. This is most useful for helper functions that define both data and aesthetics and shouldn't inherit behaviour from the default plot specification, e.g. borders.

Aesthetics

\aestheticsgeomdotplot

Computed variables

Details

There are two basic approaches: dot-density and histodot. With dot-density binning, the bin positions are determined by the data and binwidth, which is the maximum width of each bin. See Wilkinson (1999) for details on the dot-density binning algorithm. With histodot binning, the bins have fixed positions and fixed widths, much like a histogram.

When binning along the x axis and stacking along the y axis, the numbers on y axis are not meaningful, due to technical limitations of ggplot2. You can hide the y axis, as in one of the examples, or manually scale it to match the number of dots.

References

Wilkinson, L. (1999) Dot plots. The American Statistician, 53(3), 276-281.

Examples

Run this code
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg)) + geom_dotplot()
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg)) + geom_dotplot(binwidth = 1.5)

# Use fixed-width bins
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg)) +
  geom_dotplot(method="histodot", binwidth = 1.5)

# Some other stacking methods
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg)) +
  geom_dotplot(binwidth = 1.5, stackdir = "center")
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg)) +
  geom_dotplot(binwidth = 1.5, stackdir = "centerwhole")

# y axis isn't really meaningful, so hide it
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg)) + geom_dotplot(binwidth = 1.5) +
  scale_y_continuous(NULL, breaks = NULL)

# Overlap dots vertically
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg)) + geom_dotplot(binwidth = 1.5, stackratio = .7)

# Expand dot diameter
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg)) + geom_dotplot(binwidth = 1.5, dotsize = 1.25)


# Examples with stacking along y axis instead of x
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = 1, y = mpg)) +
  geom_dotplot(binaxis = "y", stackdir = "center")

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = factor(cyl), y = mpg)) +
  geom_dotplot(binaxis = "y", stackdir = "center")

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = factor(cyl), y = mpg)) +
  geom_dotplot(binaxis = "y", stackdir = "centerwhole")

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = factor(vs), fill = factor(cyl), y = mpg)) +
  geom_dotplot(binaxis = "y", stackdir = "center", position = "dodge")

# binpositions="all" ensures that the bins are aligned between groups
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = factor(am), y = mpg)) +
  geom_dotplot(binaxis = "y", stackdir = "center", binpositions="all")

# Stacking multiple groups, with different fill
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg, fill = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_dotplot(stackgroups = TRUE, binwidth = 1, binpositions = "all")

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg, fill = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_dotplot(stackgroups = TRUE, binwidth = 1, method = "histodot")

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = 1, y = mpg, fill = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_dotplot(binaxis = "y", stackgroups = TRUE, binwidth = 1, method = "histodot")

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