Making a stacked bar plot for multiple variables - ggplot2 in R

Question

I have some problems with making a stacked bar chart in ggplot2. I know how to make one with barplot(), but I wanted to use ggplot2 because it's very easy to make the bars have the same height (with 'position = 'fill'', if I'm not mistaken).

My problem is that I have multiple variables that I want to plot on top of each other; my data looks like this:

dfr <- data.frame(
  V1 = c(0.1, 0.2, 0.3),
  V2 = c(0.2, 0.3, 0.2),
  V3 = c(0.3, 0.6, 0.5),
  V4 = c(0.5, 0.1, 0.7),
  row.names = LETTERS[1:3]
)

What I want is a plot with categories A, B, and C on the X axis, and for each of those, the values for V1, V2, V3, and V4 stacked on top of each other on the Y axis. Most graphs that I have seen plot only one variable on the Y axis, but I'm sure that one could do this somehow.

How could I do this with ggplot2? Thanks!

If you found any of the answers helpful, please select one as your accepted answer. — Paul Hiemstra
– Paul Hiemstra, Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 14:21

PatrickT · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-17 11:30:54Z

25

First, some data manipulation. Add the category as a variable and melt the data to long format.

dfr$category <- row.names(dfr)
mdfr <- melt(dfr, id.vars = "category")

Now plot, using the variable named variable to determine the fill colour of each bar.

library(scales)
(p <- ggplot(mdfr, aes(category, value, fill = variable)) +
    geom_bar(position = "fill", stat = "identity") +
    scale_y_continuous(labels = percent)
)

(EDIT: Code updated to use scales packages, as required since ggplot2 v0.9.)

enter image description here

edited May 17, 2016 at 11:30

PatrickT

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answered Jul 14, 2011 at 12:51

Richie Cotton

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5 Comments

Roman Luštrik Over a year ago

@lselzer, great minds think alike! IMO, next time, you should not hesitate to post your answer, even if very similar.

Annemarie Over a year ago

Thanks so much Richie! This works for me. I have one question though - if I plot it with 'p <- ggplot(mdfr, aes(category, value, fill = variable, position = 'fill')) + + geom_bar()'; the bars do not extend upwards to have the same height. Do I need to do any thing else in order for the plot to do that? Thanks!

Rachit Agrawal Over a year ago

It doesn't work for me... I am getting Error in continuous_scale(c("y", "ymin", "ymax", "yend", "yintercept", : unused argument(s) (formatter = "percent")

Manoel Galdino Over a year ago

@RachitAgrawal, I think you must update the code. Use library(scales) and then change the code above: scale_y_continuous(labels=percent)

PatrickT Over a year ago

New ggplot syntax apparently requires geom_bar(position = "fill", stat = "identity")

I Like to Code · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-03 13:56:50Z

4

Excuse me for initiating a new answer while I really just want to add a comment on the beautiful solution provided by @Richie. I don't have the minimal points to post a comments, so here is my case:

The ... + geom_bar(position="fill") threw an error for my plotting, I'm using ggplot2 version 0.9.3.1. and reshape2 rather than reshape for the melting.

error_message:
*Mapping a variable to y and also using stat="bin".
  With stat="bin", it will attempt to set the y value to the count of cases in each group.
  This can result in unexpected behavior and will not be allowed in a future version of ggplot2.
  If you want y to represent counts of cases, use stat="bin" and don't map a variable to y.
  If you want y to represent values in the data, use stat="identity".
  See ?geom_bar for examples. (Deprecated; last used in version 0.9.2)
stat_bin: binwidth defaulted to range/30. Use 'binwidth = x' to adjust this.
Error in pmin(y, 0) : object 'y' not found*

So I changed it to geom_bar(stat='identity') and it works.

edited Apr 3, 2015 at 13:56

I Like to Code

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answered Jan 31, 2014 at 2:28

X.X

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1 Comment

I Like to Code Over a year ago

Thank you for posting this, I couldn't figure out how to fix this error!

AnilGoyal · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-26 03:35:00Z

4

You could also do like this

library(tidyverse)
dfr %>% rownames_to_column("ID") %>% pivot_longer(!ID) %>%
  ggplot() +
  geom_col(aes(x = ID, y = value, fill = name), position = 'fill')

answered Apr 26, 2021 at 3:35

AnilGoyal

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