Adding stat = count on top of histogram in ggplot

Question

I've seen some other examples (especially using geom_col() and stat_bin()) to add frequency or count numbers on top of bars. I'm trying to get this to work with geom_histogram() where I have a discrete (string), not continuous, x variable.

library(tidyverse)

d <- cars |> 
  mutate( discrete_var = factor(speed))

ggplot(d, aes(x = discrete_var)) + 
  geom_histogram(stat = "count") +
  stat_bin(binwidth=1, geom='text', color='white', aes(label=..count..),
           position=position_stack(vjust = 0.5)) +

Gives me an error because StatBin requires a continuous x variable. Any quick fix ideas?

Answer 1

The error message gives you the answer: ! StatBin requires a continuous x variable: the x variable is discrete.Perhaps you want stat="count"?

So instead of stat_bin() use stat_count()

And for further reference here is a reproducible example:

library(tidyverse)

d <- cars |> 
  mutate( discrete_var = factor(speed))

ggplot(data = d, 
       aes(x = discrete_var)) + 
  geom_histogram(stat = "count") +
  stat_count(binwidth = 1, 
             geom = 'text', 
             color = 'white', 
             aes(label = ..count..),
           position = position_stack(vjust = 0.5))