Separate axis breaks for facets

tidyverse
1

I'm creating a plot where I want the X axis to extend to 90 (days) for 3 out of 4 facets, but only 30 on the final facet. I can use different limits with scales = "free_x", but the default axis breaks don't specify the end point for each facet, which is problematic for us.

I can specify breaks manually and they look great on 3/4 facets, but result in not-great breaks on the final facet:

image
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I know it should be possible to pass a function to the breaks argument, but are there examples out there that would work for my use case? I haven't been able to get one to work.

Using this example :arrow_down: , what I'd like to do is along the lines of setting Y axis breaks at seq(0, 5000, 1000) for the first panel, and specifying that every other panel has axis breaks every $5000.

diamonds2 <- subset(diamonds, !(cut == "Fair" & price > 5000))

ggplot2::ggplot(data = diamonds2, aes(x = carat, y = price)) +
  facet_wrap(~ cut, scales = "free_y") +
  geom_point() +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks = seq(0, 15000, 5000))
    ## but how to make more flexible for Fair panel?

Ideally, I would use either breaks = 7 (for 7 breakpoints), or a function along the lines of breaks = ~ seq(min(facet_subset$time), max(facet_subset$time), length.out = 7). Is something like this possible? (breaks = 7, of course, gives me a single break point at 7!)

I've considered giving up and just creating four separate plots and patching them together (and will if I have to), but would really like to take advantage of the shared axis titles available with facets. Thanks for any ideas!

2 Likes
2

As suggested elsewhere by @karawoo: scales::pretty_breaks(n) does work, but for some reason only if your n is greater than some limit, which appears to be > 7 in this instance.

diamonds2 <- subset(diamonds, !(cut == "Fair" & price > 5000))

ggplot2::ggplot(data = diamonds2, aes(x = carat, y = price)) +
  facet_wrap(~ cut, scales = "free_y") +
  geom_point() +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks = scales::pretty_breaks(7), limits = c(0, NA))

14%20PM
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ggplot2::ggplot(data = diamonds2, aes(x = carat, y = price)) +
  facet_wrap(~ cut, scales = "free_y") +
  geom_point() +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks = scales::pretty_breaks(8), limits = c(0, NA))

51%20PM
51%20PM1787×1002 293 KB

2 Likes
3

Here is an example using explicit breaks. Note ggplot2 extends the range a bit, so you need to make the max conditional a bit larger than you may expect

library(ggplot2)
diamonds2 <- subset(diamonds, !(cut == "Fair" & price > 5000))

my_breaks <- function(x) { if (max(x) < 6000) seq(0, 5000, 1000) else seq(0, 15000, 5000) }

ggplot(data = diamonds2, aes(x = carat, y = price)) +
  facet_wrap(~ cut, scales = "free_y") +
  geom_point() +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks = my_breaks)

Created on 2018-07-02 by the reprex package (v0.2.0).

14 Likes
4

Fantastic - this works in my original case as well! Thanks so much @jimhester @bhive01!

2 Likes