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

Question

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.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-04 10:12:53Z

114

ggplot allows you to have multiple layers, and that is what you should take advantage of here.

In the plot created below, you can see that there are two geom_line statements hitting each of your datasets and plotting them together on one plot. You can extend that logic if you wish to add any other dataset, plot, or even features of the chart such as the axis labels.

library(ggplot2)

jobsAFAM1 <- data.frame(
  data_date = runif(5,1,100),
  Percent.Change = runif(5,1,100)
)

jobsAFAM2 <- data.frame(
  data_date = runif(5,1,100),
  Percent.Change = runif(5,1,100)
)

ggplot() + 
  geom_line(data = jobsAFAM1, aes(x = data_date, y = Percent.Change), color = "red") +
  geom_line(data = jobsAFAM2, aes(x = data_date, y = Percent.Change), color = "blue") +
  xlab('data_date') +
  ylab('percent.change')

edited Jul 4, 2017 at 10:12

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Nov 12, 2013 at 6:04

TheComeOnMan

12.9k9 gold badges42 silver badges55 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

SamV Over a year ago

Thanks@TheComeOnMan!! This works fantastic; is there a way I can merge the legends?

Álvaro A. Gutiérrez-Vargas Over a year ago

How can I add the legend, @TheComeOnMan?

Didzis Elferts · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-12 05:59:28Z

51

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")

enter image description here

answered Nov 12, 2013 at 5:59

Didzis Elferts

99.2k17 gold badges274 silver badges207 bronze badges

4 Comments

Patthebug Over a year ago

Thanks a lot for your answer, it achieved exactly what I was hoping for.

Darwin PC Over a year ago

@Didzis nice example, but what if I want to apply my customized colors (Eg. black and orange) and names? It looks that you are using color= as the "y" name.

Didzis Elferts Over a year ago

@DarwinPC If you need to change colors and labels inside the legend then you can use scale_color_manual()

WaterRocket8236 Over a year ago

@DidzisElferts What if x and y values in df2 are different?

Bhargav Rao · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-03 14:48:37Z

5

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)

Plot

edited Oct 3, 2016 at 14:48

Bhargav Rao

52.6k29 gold badges130 silver badges142 bronze badges

answered Oct 3, 2016 at 14:47

Marcelo Ruas

511 silver badge3 bronze badges

Comments

Chris Njuguna · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-11 15:05:02Z

5

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()

answered Dec 11, 2017 at 15:05

Chris Njuguna

3451 gold badge3 silver badges12 bronze badges

2 Comments

Fitzroy Hogsflesh Over a year ago

reshape2 is outdated, it is didactically better to use its successor dplyr right away

Chris Njuguna Over a year ago

Hi @FranzPlumpton. Would you mind giving an example using dplyr?

visitantz · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-05 04:38:57Z

3

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.

gather

edited Jan 5, 2020 at 4:38

answered Jan 3, 2020 at 1:24

visitantz

1612 silver badges8 bronze badges

3 Comments

Chris Njuguna Over a year ago

@visitanz The progression to newer ways of doing it seems like a good reason to keep this question open. Would you create a toy example like in the previous answers/comments?

visitantz Over a year ago

@Chris Njuguna, I've changed your example code in tidyverse workflow.

Chris Njuguna Over a year ago

@visitanz Neat!

JLoria · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-18 04:27:49Z

1

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()

answered Jun 18, 2017 at 4:27

JLoria

111 bronze badge

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

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

6 Answers 6

2 Comments

4 Comments

Comments

2 Comments

3 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

6 Answers 6

2 Comments

4 Comments

Comments

2 Comments

3 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related