Plot Histogram with Points Instead of Bars

Question

Here is a question for R-users. I am interested in drawing a histogram with points stacked up, instead of a bar. For example if the data is (1,1,2,1,2,3,3,3,4,4), then I would like to see three points stacked up at 1, 2 points stacked up at 2 and so on. What is the best way to do this in R?

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 20 '09 at 05:40

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You can do this yourself pretty quickly:

x <- c(1,1,2,1,2,3,3,3,4,4)
plot(sort(x), sequence(table(x)))

answered Dec 20 '09 at 05:40

Jonathan Chang

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Thanks Jonathan. This does the job for me! – Ramnath Dec 20 '09 at 13:41

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 20 '09 at 09:04

6

The simplest answer I know is this:

x <- c(1,1,2,1,2,3,3,3,4,4)
stripchart(x,method="stack",at=0)

It's better than Jonathan Chang's suggestion because stripchart does proper stacking of points.

answered Dec 20 '09 at 09:04

Rob Hyndman

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Thanks Rob. Stripchart seems very intuitive, although I would prefer the stack of points to be separate. – Ramnath Dec 20 '09 at 13:42

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 25 '13 at 13:48

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Greg Snow's TeachingDemos package contains a dots(x, ...) function which seems to fit your need:

dots( round( rnorm(50, 10,3) ) )

enter image description here

edited Apr 25 '13 at 13:48

joran

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answered Dec 20 '09 at 04:44

Solomon Choe

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Seems to be the simplest of all solutions!! Thanks Kyubic – Ramnath Dec 20 '09 at 13:44
@Ramnath: When you look at the source code it basically does the same as Jonathan Chang's answer – vonjd Apr 28 '16 at 10:10

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 25 '12 at 13:14

Another easy way would be:

x <- c(1,1,2,1,2,3,3,3,4,4)
myhist <- hist(x)
myhistX <- myhist$mids
myhistY <- myhist$density

And now you can plot it in any way you like:

plot(myhistY~myhistX)

This way you can change the stacking options when building a "histogram" object.

Plot Histogram with Points Instead of Bars

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