Set Axis Breaks of ggplot2 Plot in R
In this article, we are going to see how to set axis break of ggplot2 plot in R Programming Language.
To add axis breaks in ggplot2 plots in R, we use scale_x_break() and scale_y_break() functions. These functions take a vector as a parameter that has breakpoints. If we need multiple breakpoints we can add those too.
Syntax:
scale_x_continuous(breaks = <break-vec>)
scale_y_continuous(breaks = <break-vec>)
Example 1: Specify X-Axis Ticks in ggplot2 Plot
Here is a ggplot2 scatter plot with x-axis break using scale_x_continuous() function. This function has a breaks parameter that takes a vector as input which has all the points of axis break as vector points. So, here we can set the axis breaks point to a plot manually.
Code:
R
# Create sample data set.seed (5642) sample_data <- data.frame (x = rnorm (1000), y = rnorm (1000)) # Load ggplot2 and ggbreak library ( "ggplot2" ) library ( "ggbreak" ) # create plot with axis break ggplot (sample_data, aes (x = x, y = y)) + geom_point () + scale_x_continuous (breaks = c (-1,0, 1)) |
Output:
Example 2: Specify Y-Axis Ticks in ggplot2 Plot
Here is a ggplot2 scatter plot with y-axis break using the scale_y_continuous() function. This function has a breaks parameter that takes a vector as input which has all the points of y-axis break as vector points. So, here we can set the axis breaks point to a plot manually.
R
# Create sample data set.seed (5642) sample_data <- data.frame (x = rnorm (1000), y = rnorm (1000)) # Load ggplot2 and ggbreak library ( "ggplot2" ) library ( "ggbreak" ) # create plot with axis break ggplot (sample_data, aes (x = x, y = y)) + geom_point () + scale_y_continuous (breaks = c (-2, -1, 0, 1)) |
Output:
Example 3: Specifying Sequence of Axis Ticks in ggplot2 Plot
To specify the sequence of axis ticks we use the seq function as a parameter to breaks the property of scale_x_continuous / scale_y_continuous instead of vector. Here instead of giving input as a vector, we give input as a sequence that has three points, the first is starting break, the second is ending break and the third one is break period between starting and ending break.
Syntax: plot+ scale_x_continuous(breaks = <seq-vec>) / scale_y_continuous(breaks = <seq-vec>)
Code:
R
# Create sample data set.seed (5642) sample_data <- data.frame (x = rnorm (1000), y = rnorm (1000)) # Load ggplot2 and ggbreak library ( "ggplot2" ) library ( "ggbreak" ) # create plot with axis break ggplot (sample_data, aes (x = x, y = y)) + geom_point () + scale_x_continuous (breaks = seq (-3, 4, 0.2)) |
Output: