How to expand the limits of a barplot in R beyond the data limits?

Question

I want to create a barchart of some data, I collected from a survey using the R programming language. The X values of my data range between 4-10 but I want my xaxis to range between 0-10 to display the full range of variables that my survey could have possibly given.

Data:

X = 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 

Y = 5 7 2 10 5 2 5

I have tried:

barplot(data, xlim(0,10),xpd=TRUE)

I've also tried using the 'expand_limits' function in ggplot2 with no avail either. This hasnt done what I expected. I want my graph to range between 0 and 10 with bars only plotted on x values of 4-10.

If someone could help me I'd be really thankful.

Your code does not work, please make questions copy-paste reproducible, help: [how-to-make-a-great-r-reproducible-example](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5963269/how-to-make-a-great-r-reproducible-example/5963610#5963610) — jay.sf, Jun 29 '20 at 13:58

csgroen · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-29T14:21:01.967

1

Welcome to SO!

The barplot function doesn't really have an "x-axis", as you can see. If you try using the limits, it will assume that the first height you give it is the height number 1 and so on, and put the "empty space" at the end.

Alternatively, this ggplot2 solution should work:

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(df, aes(X, Y)) +
    geom_col(color = "black", fill = "grey60") +
    lims(x = c(0,10.5)) +
    theme_classic()

You can read more about it to tweak the plot style.

edited Jun 29 '20 at 14:21

answered Jun 29 '20 at 14:02

csgroen

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I think this is how I would actually do it rather than the somewhat more limited `barplot`. Remember you can use `geom_col` instead of `geom_bar(stat = "identity")` – Allan Cameron Jun 29 '20 at 14:05
Cheers @csgroen ! Yeah, there really isnt that much info in the help pages on precisely this problem and I've been tearing my hair out all morning trying to fix something that should be so simple. Thanks for your help! – Graham Jun 29 '20 at 14:15
Thanks @AllanCameron, I keep forgetting about `geom_col`. Edited to use that ;) – csgroen Jun 29 '20 at 14:22

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 29 '20 at 14:02

0

A barplot is really for categorical variables, so if you convert your X variable to a factor and include all the levels you want, you should get the desired plot:

data <- data.frame(X = factor(c(4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), levels = 1:10),
                   Y = c(5, 7, 2, 10, 5, 2, 5))

barplot(Y ~ X, data = data, xpd=TRUE)

^{Created on 2020-06-29 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)}

answered Jun 29 '20 at 14:02

Allan Cameron

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Thanks! This has fixed my issue, might need a different fix if my dataset gets too much bigger but this works for now. I appreciate it! – Graham Jun 29 '20 at 14:13
is it possible to define the limits of a boxplot in a similar to this? – Graham Jun 29 '20 at 15:40
Yes Graham, in exactly the same way. – Allan Cameron Jun 29 '20 at 15:58

How to expand the limits of a barplot in R beyond the data limits?

2 Answers2