R – emulate the default behavior of hist() with ggplot2 for bin width

by

Without sample data, it’s always difficult to get reproducible results, so i’ve created a sample dataset

set.seed(16)
mydata <- data.frame(myvariable=rnorm(500, 1500000, 10000))

#base histogram
hist(mydata$myvariable)

As you’ve learned, hist() is a generic function. If you want to see the different implementations you can type methods(hist). Most of the time you’ll be running hist.default. So if be borrow the break finding logic from that funciton, we come up with

brx <- pretty(range(mydata$myvariable), 
    n = nclass.Sturges(mydata$myvariable),min.n = 1)

which is how hist() by default calculates the breaks. We can then use these breaks with the ggplot command

ggplot(mydata, aes(x=myvariable)) + 
    geom_histogram(color="darkgray",fill="white", breaks=brx) + 
    scale_x_continuous("My variable") + 
    theme(axis.text=element_text(size=14),axis.title=element_text(size=16,face="bold"))

and the plot below shows the two results side-by-side and as you can see they are quite similar.

enter image description here

Also, that empty bim was probably caused by your y-axis limits. If a shape goes outside the limits of the range you specify in scale_y_continuous, it will simply get dropped from the plot. It looks like that bin wanted to be 14 tall, but you clipped y at 12.5.

More Related Contents:

  1. Scatterplot with marginal histograms in ggplot2
  2. Overlay histogram with density curve
  3. Extract data from a ggplot
  4. Merge and Perfectly Align Histogram and Boxplot using ggplot2
  5. Understanding dates and plotting a histogram with ggplot2 in R
  6. Normalizing y-axis in histograms in R ggplot to proportion
  7. Different breaks per facet in ggplot2 histogram
  8. How to align the bars of a histogram with the x axis?
  9. How to plot multiple stacked histograms together in R?
  10. Creating a density histogram in ggplot2?
  11. How to make variable bar widths in ggplot2 not overlap or gap
  12. Normalizing y-axis in histograms in R ggplot to proportion by group
  13. Changing fonts in ggplot2
  14. “for” loop only adds the final ggplot layer
  15. geom_rect and alpha – does this work with hard coded values?
  16. Controlling ggplot2 legend display order
  17. Nested facets in ggplot2 spanning groups
  18. ggplot2: histogram with normal curve
  19. How to get a reversed, log10 scale in ggplot2?
  20. geom_boxplot with precomputed values
  21. Is there a built-in way to do a logarithmic color scale in ggplot2?
  22. World map with ggmap
  23. Saving a graph with ggsave after using ggplot_build and ggplot_gtable
  24. Plotting a stacked bar plot?
  25. The same width of the bars in geom_bar(position = “dodge”)
  26. Changing the order of dodged bars in ggplot2 barplot
  27. ggplot2: Setting geom_bar baseline to 1 instead of zero
  28. Plot background colour in gradient
  29. Different axis limits per facet in ggplot2
  30. Relocating Alaska and Hawaii on thematic map of the USA with ggplot2

Leave a Comment