ggplot2 width of boxplot

Question

I was trying to make 2 separate plots which I want to present side by side in my poster (I need to make them separate and cannot make use of facet_wrap). One of the plots has several boxplots, while the second plot only has one. How can I manipulate the width of the boxplots such that the second boxplot is the same dimension as the width of any one of the individual boxplots in plot 1, when I put the two plots side by side? A reproducible example:

tvalues <- sample(1:10000,1200)
sex <- c(rep('M',600),rep('F',600))
region <- c('R1','R2','R3','R4','R5')
df1 <- data.frame(tvalues,sex,region)

tvalues2 <- sample(1:10000,200)
sex2 <- sample(c('M','F'),200,replace=T)
region2 <- 'R6'
df2 <- data.frame(tvalues2,sex2,region2)

p1 <- ggplot(data=df1,aes(x=region,y=tvalues,color=sex)) + 
geom_boxplot(width=0.5)
p2 <- ggplot(data=df2,aes(x=region2,y=tvalues2,color=sex2)) + 
geom_boxplot(width=0.5)

Plot 1 plot 1:

Plot2 plot 2:

Marco Sandri · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-24 17:16:52Z

27

I suggest to divide the width of boxes in the second plot by the number of categories of region in the first plot.

p2 <- ggplot(data=df2,aes(x=region2,y=tvalues2,color=sex2)) + 
geom_boxplot(width=0.5/length(unique(df1$region)))

answered Oct 24, 2017 at 17:16

Marco Sandri

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Miguel Prieto · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-17 22:08:05Z

7

In case of a single boxplot like in the following example:

a<- data.frame(obs=rep("A", 50),
       value=rnorm(50, 100, 50))

ggplot(a, aes(y=value))+
geom_boxplot()

Wide boxplot

We can establish a false x/y axis and establish an axis limit so the width option of geom_boxplot() determines the width of the box

ggplot(a, aes(y=value, x=0))+
geom_boxplot(width=0.7) + 
xlim(-1,1)

Thin boxplot

You can add the following to remove all x.axis text and ticks

theme(theme(axis.title.x = element_blank(), axis.text.x = element_blank(), axis.ticks.x = element_blank())

edited Jan 17 at 22:08

answered Oct 11, 2021 at 19:31

Miguel Prieto

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