How to decrease space from boxplot to edge with ggplot2?

Question

I want to put a boxplot beneath a histogram. I already figured out how to do this, but the boxplot and the histogram are equally sized and I want to slim down the boxplot. When I decrease the width, the spaces to the edges stay the same. However, I want to decrease the width of the whole thing.

Here is what I have so far:

library(ggplot2)
h = ggplot(mtcars, aes(x=hp)) +
  geom_histogram(aes(y = ..density..)) +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks=c(100, 200, 300), limits=c(0,400)) +
  geom_density(, linetype="dotted")

b <- ggplot(mtcars,aes(x=factor(0),hp))+geom_boxplot(width=0.1) +
  coord_flip(ylim=c(0,400)) +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks=c(100, 200, 300)) +
  theme(axis.title.y=element_blank(),
    axis.text.y=element_blank(),
    axis.ticks.y=element_blank())

library(gridExtra)
plots <- list(h, b)
grobs <- list()
widths <- list()
for (i in 1:length(plots)){
  grobs[[i]] <- ggplotGrob(plots[[i]])
  widths[[i]] <- grobs[[i]]$widths[2:5]
}
maxwidth <- do.call(grid::unit.pmax, widths)
for (i in 1:length(grobs)){
  grobs[[i]]$widths[2:5] <- as.list(maxwidth)
}
do.call("grid.arrange", c(grobs, ncol=1))

hist+boxplot

Edit:
If I use grid.arrange() like so:

grid.arrange(heights=c(4,1), h, b)

enter image description here

The proportions are exactly like I wanted it, but I cannot figure out how to adjust my first example above so that the axes are aligned again.

Anyone?

Thanks, but that doesn't look like what I'm after. If your're referring to the heights option of grid.arrange, could you please tell me how to adjust my example accordingly. All my tries so far have failed. — jhscheer
– jhscheer, Commented Mar 31, 2014 at 0:53
+1 for such a nicely reproducible question with an almost-there attempt included. — Gregor Thomas
– Gregor Thomas, Commented Mar 31, 2014 at 1:34

Gregor Thomas · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-31 01:33:44Z

1

You just need to use your width-corrected grobs, not the original plots, in the grid.arrange call.

grid.arrange(heights = c(4, 1), grobs[[1]], grobs[[2]])

answered Mar 31, 2014 at 1:33

Gregor Thomas

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