Position dodge not working in time series

Question

I want to dodge the points and error bars on this time series, but I keep getting stacked points/error bars

AcrossSites<-structure(list(ExpectedPA = structure(c(1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 2L, 
2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 4L, 4L, 4L, 4L, 4L, 5L, 5L, 
5L, 5L, 5L), .Label = c("0", "1", "5", "20", "50"), class = "factor"), 
    Date = structure(c(1649721600, 1653609600, 1657497600, 1660262400, 
    1662508800, 1649721600, 1653609600, 1657497600, 1660262400, 
    1662508800, 1649721600, 1653609600, 1657497600, 1660262400, 
    1662508800, 1649721600, 1653609600, 1657497600, 1660262400, 
    1662508800, 1649721600, 1653609600, 1657497600, 1660262400, 
    1662508800), tzone = "UTC", class = c("POSIXct", "POSIXt"
    )), avg = c(79, 55.5, 63.7916666666667, 53.2916666666667, 
    64.5416666666667, 79.7916666666667, 53.2916666666667, 52.9166666666667, 
    43.9166666666667, 48.5, 75.1666666666667, 56.2916666666667, 
    63.8333333333333, 53.7916666666667, 65.5416666666667, 74.9583333333333, 
    61.25, 55.375, 43.2083333333333, 47.5416666666667, 80.9166666666667, 
    63.125, 57, 51.2916666666667, 49.9583333333333), SE = c(2.46717581897585, 
    2.05362881367296, 3.5914447290117, 3.92939459818081, 6.08632917100101, 
    2.70933649203142, 2.69895253881266, 4.06688494306104, 4.94422392712404, 
    6.65097791654557, 2.56415273083589, 2.67535665146918, 3.56394315628856, 
    4.71044905651358, 7.02814712802315, 2.26302923721776, 1.89129393633649, 
    4.1230232417698, 4.1702792310269, 5.23746923019105, 2.20006313040735, 
    1.69217348015992, 3.87765804114519, 4.22230068418071, 5.85249827946247
    )), class = c("grouped_df", "tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"
), row.names = c(NA, -25L), groups = structure(list(ExpectedPA = structure(1:5, .Label = c("0", 
"1", "5", "20", "50"), class = "factor"), .rows = structure(list(
    1:5, 6:10, 11:15, 16:20, 21:25), ptype = integer(0), class = c("vctrs_list_of", 
"vctrs_vctr", "list"))), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"
), row.names = c(NA, -5L), .drop = TRUE))

Here's my data frame, and I want to graph "ExpectedPA" changing over time

ggplot(AcrossSites, aes(x=Date, y=avg, ymin=avg-SE, ymax=avg+SE, color=ExpectedPA))+
  geom_line(size=1, position=position_dodge(width=10))+
  geom_point(position =position_dodge(width=10), size=2)+
  geom_errorbar(position=position_dodge(width=10), width=10, size=0.6)+
  ylab("Total Stems")+
  ggtitle("Total Stems Across Sites")+
  xlab("")+
  theme_bw()+
  theme(legend.title = element_blank(), legend.position = c(.8, .8), text = element_text(color="black", size = 12))

Please advise!

Answer 1

One option would be to convert your datetimes to dates. Not sure whether that is an option for you but at least from your example data I don't see any reason to work with date times.

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(AcrossSites, aes(x = as.Date(Date), y = avg, ymin = avg - SE, ymax = avg + SE, color = ExpectedPA)) +
  geom_line(size = 1, position = position_dodge(width = 10)) +
  geom_point(position = position_dodge(width = 10), size = 2) +
  geom_errorbar(position = position_dodge(width = 10), width = .1, size = 0.6) +
  ylab("Total Stems") +
  ggtitle("Total Stems Across Sites") +
  xlab("") +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(legend.title = element_blank(), legend.position = c(.8, .8), text = element_text(color = "black", size = 12))

UPDATE I had another look. Dodging works for date times too. But to make it visible we have to increase the width even further, e.g. in the code below I use 1e6:

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(AcrossSites, aes(x = Date, y = avg, ymin = avg - SE, ymax = avg + SE, color = ExpectedPA)) +
  geom_line(size = 1, position = position_dodge(width = 1e6)) +
  geom_point(position = position_dodge(width = 1e6), size = 2) +
  geom_errorbar(position = position_dodge(width = 1e6), width = .1, size = 0.6) +
  ylab("Total Stems") +
  ggtitle("Total Stems Across Sites") +
  xlab("") +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(legend.title = element_blank(), legend.position = c(.8, .8), text = element_text(color = "black", size = 12))