Avoid clipping of points along axis in ggplot

Question

I am plotting a time series with mean values of a response variable as points (y-axis) by month (x-axis).

Values lying on the x-axis (i.e. 0 values) are clipped. I can change the limits of the y-axis to include some padding below 0, but I prefer not to.

Is there a way to plot these 0 points in front of, or on-top of the x-axis?

score 19 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 13 '12 at 20:05

19

Try this,

q <- qplot(1:10,1:10,size=I(10)) + scale_y_continuous(expand=c(0,0))
gt <- ggplot_gtable(ggplot_build(q))
gt$layout$clip[gt$layout$name=="panel"] <- "off"
grid.draw(gt)

clipoff

answered Mar 13 '12 at 20:05

baptiste

75,767
19
198
294

Will do, and try again. Thank you! – user1267299 Mar 15 '12 at 05:36
1

Subbing in the following code turns off clipping when faceting: `gt$layout$clip[grep("panel",gt$layout$name)] <- "off"` – jslefche May 20 '13 at 17:18
how would you turn `gt` back into a ggplot/gg object? – rawr Nov 27 '14 at 17:57
2

i doubt you can, it's like turning a baked cake into flour and eggs – baptiste Nov 27 '14 at 22:15
Is there a way to only turn off clipping on the x-axis but keep it on the y-axis? – user2568648 Feb 06 '15 at 15:59
1

This solution doesn't work when the plot contains axes; try adding **color = "red" to the aesthetics** and + theme_bw() to the first line of the code. The axis appears on top of the red dots. (I haven't found a solution yet.) – user2363777 Feb 21 '19 at 20:14

bschneidr · Answer 2 · 2018-08-21T21:43:37.327

16

With the release of ggplot2 version 3.0.0, you can simply use coord_cartesian(clip = 'off').

library(ggplot2)

qplot(x = 1:10, y = 1:10, size=I(10)) + 
  scale_y_continuous(expand=c(0,0)) +
  coord_cartesian(clip = 'off') +
  labs(title = "coord_cartesian(clip = 'off')")

If you're using one of the less commonly-used coord_* systems or functions (e.g. coord_polar or coord_flip), then you can use the clip = 'off' argument there, too.

my_plot + 
coord_flip(clip = 'off')

edited Aug 21 '18 at 21:43

answered Jul 13 '18 at 04:47

bschneidr

6,014
1
37
52

Thanks for pointing that out! Your point is now incorporated into the answer. – bschneidr Aug 21 '18 at 21:44
1

This solution doesn't work when the plot contains axes; try adding **color = "red"** to the aesthetics and **+ theme_bw()** to the end of the code. The axis appears on top of the red dots. (I haven't found a solution yet.) – user2363777 Feb 21 '19 at 20:13
That's a good point. I'd recommend opening a new question to address that, because it's a separate issue and a good question. – bschneidr Mar 07 '19 at 01:02

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 07 '16 at 14:51

2

You can use attribute expand() on the scale_y
Exemple for 10% each side of y scale :

ggplot(mydata, aes(y = value, x = mydate)) +
  geom_point() +
  scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0.1,0.1))

edited Aug 07 '16 at 14:51

Darek Kay

15,827
7
64
61

answered Mar 13 '12 at 19:38

b_rousseau

159
8

Thank you. This works by expanding the range of the y axis. It works nicely, but I would prefer something like that suggested by baptiste above. i.e., the x axis starts at 0, but the 0 points are plotted on-top of it. Thank you for your help, though. – user1267299 Mar 14 '12 at 18:33
1

I think that should be `+ scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0.1,0.1))`. – user12719 Mar 02 '15 at 22:05

John · Answer 4 · 2014-12-31T00:54:07.357

-1

If you were using base graphics you could use clip().

plot(1:4)
clip(-0.5, 4.1, -0.5, 4.1)
points(0.85, 1, col = 'red', cex = 2)

edited Dec 31 '14 at 00:54

answered Mar 14 '12 at 00:49

John

23,360
7
57
83

I couldn't figure out how to make this work within ggplot script. I also tried plotting the figure, then clipping and adding a point on top. But that did not work either. Thanks. – user1267299 Mar 14 '12 at 18:28

Avoid clipping of points along axis in ggplot

4 Answers4

Linked

Related