Merging separate Month and Year columns to graph in ggplot2

Question

I've been around the forums looking for a solution to my issue but can't seem to find anything. Derivatives of my question and their answer haven't really helped either. My data has four columns, one for Year and one for Month). I've been wanting to plot the data all in one graph without using any facets for years in ggplot. This is what I've been struggling with so far with:

df<-data.frame(Month = rep(c("January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June",
                         "July", "August", "September", "October", 
                         "November", "February", "March"),each = 20), 
           Year = rep(c("2018", "2019"), times = c(220, 40)), 
                      Type = rep(c("C", "T"), 260), 
                                 Value = runif(260, min = 10, max = 55))
df$Month<-ordered(df$Month, month.name)
df$Year<-ordered(df$Year)
ggplot(df) + 
  geom_boxplot(aes(x = Month, y = Value, fill = Type)) +
  facet_wrap(~Year)

I'd ideally like to manage this using dplyr and lubridate. Any help would be appreciated!

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 26 '19 at 15:35

4

One option would be to make a true date value, then you can use the date axis formatter. Something like this is a rough start

ggplot(df) + 
  geom_boxplot(aes(x = lubridate::mdy(paste(Month, 1, Year)), y = Value, fill = Type, group=lubridate::mdy(paste(Month, 1, Year)))) + 
  scale_x_date(breaks="month", date_labels = "%m")

answered Mar 26 '19 at 15:35

MrFlick

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Hi @MrFlick Thanks for the quick response I think that could work. Any ideas on how you would add vertical lines between those months especially when the x-axis is on a date class scale? – Leo Ohyama Mar 26 '19 at 15:37
@LeoOhyama you mean like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5388832/how-to-get-a-vertical-geom-vline-to-an-x-axis-of-class-date – MrFlick Mar 26 '19 at 15:39
exactly! Thanks so much! – Leo Ohyama Mar 26 '19 at 15:40
Hey @MrFlick . I just got one more question. Your answer specified the fill aesthetic as for the Variable "type" but the graph still doesn't show this fill. – Leo Ohyama Mar 26 '19 at 15:46

LocoGris · Answer 2 · 2019-03-26T15:38:42.167

Do you mean this?

 df<-data.frame(Month = rep(c("January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June",
                             "July", "August", "September", "October", 
                             "November", "February", "March"),each = 20), 
               Year = rep(c("2018", "2019"), times = c(220, 40)), 
               Type = rep(c("C", "T"), 260), 
               Value = runif(260, min = 10, max = 55))
df$Month <- factor(df$Month,levels=c("January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June",
                             "July", "August", "September", "October", 
                                  "November", "Dicember"), ordered = T)
df$Month<-ordered(df$Month)
df$Year<-ordered(df$Year)
df$Year_Month <- paste0(df$Month, " ", df$Year)

df$Year_Month <- factor(df$Year_Month, levels = unique(df$Year_Month))

ggplot(df) + 
  geom_boxplot(aes(x = Year_Month, y = Value, fill = Type))

Merging separate Month and Year columns to graph in ggplot2

2 Answers2