Sorting problem
On 24-Dec-04 Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
From: Paul JH Drake <p.drake at beatson.gla.ac.uk>
When I plot data as a boxplot, the boxes appear on the plot in alphabetical order (of group) rather than the order in which they appear in the data. So far, the only thing I can do to fix this is to prefix the group labels with a,b,c...etc to trick R into plotting them in the right order. Can sorting be turned off? How should I address this sensibly?
Actually they are shown in order of the levels of the factor. e.g. to show them in reverse order: attach(InsectSprays) spray <- factor( as.character(spray), level = rev(levels(spray)) ) boxplot(count ~ spray)
Applying boxplot to data constructed as follows: X<-list(C=rnorm(10),B=rnorm(20),A=rnorm(30)) boxplot(X) gives the plots in the order "C", "B", "A", so here they indeed come out in the order of the data. But suppose I had wanted them in the order "B", "A", "C", say. How would Gabor's suggestion (or similar) be applied to this case? (OK I'm being thick, maybe; but I can't see how to relate the one to the other!) Ted.