Variable label position in ggplot line chart

Question

I have the following data frame summary created with dplyr

structure(list(maxrep = c(7L, 7L, 8L, 8L, 9L, 9L, 10L, 10L, 11L, 
11L, 12L, 12L, 13L, 13L, 14L, 14L, 15L, 15L, 16L, 16L, 17L, 17L, 
18L, 18L, 19L, 19L, 20L, 20L, 21L, 21L, 22L, 22L, 23L, 23L, 24L, 
24L, 26L, 26L), div = structure(c(1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 
2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 
2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L), .Label = c("Premier Division", 
"Second Division"), class = "factor"), freq = c(1L, 10L, 4L, 
39L, 26L, 89L, 73L, 146L, 107L, 162L, 117L, 133L, 121L, 125L, 
116L, 91L, 110L, 65L, 95L, 43L, 75L, 38L, 43L, 24L, 38L, 16L, 
36L, 5L, 15L, 2L, 9L, 7L, 9L, 1L, 3L, 3L, 2L, 1L)), .Names = c("maxrep", 
"div", "freq"), class = c("grouped_df", "tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"
), row.names = c(NA, -38L))

My intention is to use ggplot2 to plot line graphs of 2 lines with different colour with text labels for each value.

What I did was

ggplot(df, aes(x=maxrep, y=freq, colour=div)) +
geom_line() +
geom_text(aes(label=freq), vjust=-.5)

The result was

enter image description here

Now my question: All the labels in the chart are above the points in respective lines. I want to have the labels for the different colours to be in different relative position, e.g. labels for cyan above the line, and labels for red below the line (i.e. variable vjust). Is there a way to do that?

Also, is there a way to get read of the letter a in the colour legend on the right?

Have you though on plotting each line at time altering hjust and vjust for each? — daniel, Jan 31 '15 at 16:42
Not really; can't really figure out splitting the `geom_text` into two, one for each line? — Ricky, Jan 31 '15 at 16:44
Well, I thing @RStudent just implemented my suggestion idea. — daniel, Feb 01 '15 at 16:49

DatamineR · Answer 1 · 2015-01-31T18:11:12.033

5

What about plotting the lines separately wich differing vjust values? You can get rid of a in the legend setting show_guide = FALSE.

ggplot(df, aes(x=maxrep, y=freq, colour=div, label = freq)) +
    geom_line() +
    geom_text(data = df[df$div == "Second Division",], vjust=2, show_guide = FALSE) + geom_text(data = df[df$div == "Premier Division",], vjust=-2, show_guide = FALSE)

Which returns:

enter image description here

edited Jan 31 '15 at 18:11

answered Jan 31 '15 at 16:47

DatamineR

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score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 31 '15 at 17:04

4

Create a new variable in the data.frame holding the vjust adjustment parameter:

df$pos <- c(2, -2)[(df$div == "Premier Division")+1]

And you could call vjust inside aes with the new pos vector:

ggplot(df, aes(x=maxrep, y=freq, colour=div)) +
    geom_line() +
    geom_text(aes(label=freq, vjust=pos))

answered Jan 31 '15 at 17:04

talat

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Thanks, this is great, I managed to adopt it for even more conditions. I actually tried this before I asked the question, but I didn't realise the `vjust` portion needs to be inside the `aes`. – Ricky Feb 02 '15 at 05:17

Variable label position in ggplot line chart

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