Change plot area of ggplot2 pie chart

Question

Can anybody tell me how to change the plot area so that all the labels will fit and won't be cut of, or to maybe size down the pie chart.

This is the ggpie function I use

ggpie <- function (dat, by, totals,perc) {
ggplot(dat, aes_string(x=factor(1), y=totals, fill=by, width =0.5)) +
geom_bar(stat='identity', color='black') +
guides(fill=F) +
scale_fill_manual("Genes", values = gc1)+
coord_polar(theta='y',start=1) +  
theme(axis.ticks=element_blank(),
      axis.text.y=element_blank(),
      panel.grid=element_blank(),
      axis.text.x=element_text(colour='black',size=12,face='bold'),
      axis.title=element_blank(),
      plot.margin=unit(c(1,10,1,1),"cm"))+
scale_y_continuous(breaks=cumsum(dat[[totals]]) - dat[[totals]] / 2, labels=paste("example", dat[[perc]],"%"))}

This where I call the function

GP <- ggpie(high, by='Genes', totals='Count',perc='Percent')+
theme(plot.title = element_text(face='bold', size=16))+
theme(axis.ticks.margin=unit(0,"lines"),plot.margin=rep(unit(0, "lines"),4)) +
theme(legend.title=element_text(size=16))+
theme(legend.text=element_text(face='bold'))
print(GP)

As you can see I already tried plot.margin and also I tried par(mar=c(), oma=c())

It seems to be some scaling problem, for example when I look at the graph with the zoom function in r studio it is fine. However when you save it it is not...

I hope that somebody can help me with either increasing the area or scaling don the pie.

Example data:

    Genes   Count   Frequency   Percent
1   example 43,5427786  0,228215768 22,8215768
2   example 20,583859   0,107883817 10,7883817
3   example 16,6254246  0,087136929 8,7136929
4   example 15,8337377  0,082987552 8,2987552
5   example 13,458677   0,070539419 7,0539419
6   example 7,9168688   0,041493776 4,1493776
7   example 6,3334951   0,033195021 3,3195021
8   example 6,3334951   0,033195021 3,3195021
9   example 6,3334951   0,033195021 3,3195021
10  example 5,5418082   0,029045643 2,9045643
11  example 4,7501213   0,024896266 2,4896266
12  example 3,9584344   0,020746888 2,0746888
13  example 3,9584344   0,020746888 2,0746888
14  example 3,9584344   0,020746888 2,0746888
15  example 3,9584344   0,020746888 2,0746888
16  example 3,1667475   0,01659751  1,659751
17  example 2,3750607   0,012448133 1,2448133
18  example 2,3750607   0,012448133 1,2448133
19  example 2,3750607   0,012448133 1,2448133
20  example 2,3750607   0,012448133 1,2448133
21  example 1,5833738   0,008298755 0,8298755
22  example 1,5833738   0,008298755 0,8298755
23  example 1,5833738   0,008298755 0,8298755
24  example 1,5833738   0,008298755 0,8298755
25  example 1,5833738   0,008298755 0,8298755
26  example 0,7916869   0,004149378 0,4149378
27  example 0,7916869   0,004149378 0,4149378
28  example 0,7916869   0,004149378 0,4149378
29  example 0,7916869   0,004149378 0,4149378
30  example 0,7916869   0,004149378 0,4149378
31  example 0,7916869   0,004149378 0,4149378
32  example 0,7916869   0,004149378 0,4149378
33  example 0,7916869   0,004149378 0,4149378
34  example 0,7916869   0,004149378 0,4149378

Piecharts are notoriously hard to interpret. What about a barchart? — Heroka, Oct 05 '15 at 13:25
I know people don't like them, but they can be very helpful to quickly grasp the the relative composition of a mixture — Robin, Oct 05 '15 at 13:30
@Robin there are other ways to do that, and humans are not very good at estimating angles. — Heroka, Oct 05 '15 at 13:36

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 05 '15 at 13:04

0

By increasing the absolute size of the plot area, your labels will become relatively smaller (as they have a fixed point size). That is what happens if you zoom the view in RStudio. When you save your plot using ggsave or png (helpful SO question here), and specify a larger absolute size, you will notice that your plot clears up.

(If you export part of your data using dput (see here), I'll give you an example.)

Here are some more tips for producing proper R graphics, including some details on dpi and dimensions.

answered Oct 05 '15 at 13:04

ROLO

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Tnxs for the tips!!, the problem is that I don't want to end up with a huge pie. If I save it with a large absolute size and later re-scale the picture to my desired size the text will become unreadable. Can I change the proportional size of the pie? – Robin Oct 05 '15 at 13:19
Not sure, but some of the "related questions" to this question (at the right side of this page) might give you some ideas (e.g. [this one](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8612920/pie-charts-in-ggplot2-with-variable-pie-sizes)). – ROLO Oct 05 '15 at 13:31

Change plot area of ggplot2 pie chart

1 Answers1