how to plot multiple box plots on one graph using ggplot

Question

I am running the following line of code

 bp <- ggplot(data, aes(x = Month, y = days, group = Month)) + geom_boxplot()+facet_wrap(~Depth)

which works fine and produces a plot of 3 graphs of 3 different Depths each containing a boxplot for each month (I can't post an img of it yet)

However, I would like to display them on a single graph with Depth colour coded for the 3 variables (25, 100, and 300). How would I achieve this? my data look like this

 depth month days
  25     1    49
  25     1    51
  100    1    52
  100    1    55 
  300    1    52
  300    1    50
  25     2    47
  25     2    48
  100    2    53
  100    2    57
  300    2    56
  300    2    59
  ...   ...  ...

If this is a duplicate question I apologise but the questions I looked at didn't seem to fit my needs I have tried using

bp + geom_boxplot(position = position_dodge(width = 0.8))

as suggested here but didn't create one graph

thanks

IRTFM · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-27 03:31:51Z

1

I'm not sure what it means to ask for "Depth colour coded" so let's start with the request to have them "all on one plot". You can use the interaction function to construct a two-way grouping that will get honored by geom_boxplot:

 bp <- ggplot(dat, aes(x = interaction(month,depth, sep=" x "), y = days)) + 
                   geom_boxplot()
 bp

This might have been what was requested:

 bp <- ggplot(data, aes(x = group, y = days, 
                        group = interaction(month, depth) , colour = as.factor(depth) )) + 
          geom_boxplot() 
 bp

edited Jun 27, 2016 at 3:31

answered Jun 24, 2016 at 3:22

IRTFM

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6 Comments

Vaughn Over a year ago

Thanks for the advice 42- the first answer looks like it is what I need

Vaughn Over a year ago

There is actually an error in the data supplied it should have only 25, 100 and 300 for each month rather than multiples of the same depth

IRTFM Over a year ago

Wouldn't make much sense to use a boxplot if there is only one value per combination of factors.

Vaughn Over a year ago

here is what I was trying to achieve ggplot(data, aes(x = factor(Month), y = days, colour = Depth)) + geom_boxplot(aes(group = group)). My description probably didn't explain it clearly

IRTFM Over a year ago

Perhaps:

bp <- ggplot(data, aes(x = group, y = days, group = interaction(month, depth) , colour = as.factor(depth) )) + geom_boxplot() ; bp

|

pe-perry · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-24 03:32:09Z

1

If I understand your question correctly, your task can be done by following codes,

data <- read.table(text = "depth month days
25     1    49
25     1    51
100    1    52
100    1    55 
300    1    52
300    1    50
25     2    47
25     2    48
100    2    53
100    2    57
300    2    56
300    2    59", header = TRUE)

First, create a new variable group

data$group <- with(data, paste("Month:", month, ",depth:", formatC(depth, width = 3, flag = 0), sep = ""))

Then draw the boxplot, and you have to specify the colour using scale_colour_manual().

bp <- ggplot(data, aes(x = group, y = days, group = group, colour = group)) + geom_boxplot() + scale_colour_manual(values = rep(1:3, 2))
bp

answered Jun 24, 2016 at 3:32

pe-perry

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2 Comments

IRTFM Over a year ago

On my interactive graphics device this looks a lot better if you insert an "\n", after the month argument to paste,

Vaughn Over a year ago

Great thanks! this looks like it may have solved my problem, although I haven't been able to get it to work with my full dataset just yet. I think I should be able to get it to work with a little bit of playing around

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