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Coord_equal in ggplot2

4 messages · ONKELINX, Thierry, Michael Lawrence, Dieter Menne

#
Dear all,

I'm plotting some points on a graph where both axes need to have the
same scale. See the example below. Coord_equal does that trick but in
this case it wastes a lot of space on the y-axis. Setting the limits of
the y-axis myself was no avail. 

Any suggestions to solve this problem?  

library(ggplot2)
ds <- data.frame(x = runif(1000, min = 0, max = 300000), y = runif(1000,
min = 140000, max = 260000))
ggplot(ds, aes(x = x, y = y)) + geom_point() + coord_equal()
ggplot(ds, aes(x = x, y = y)) + geom_point() + coord_equal() +
scale_x_continuous(limits = c(0, 300000)) + scale_y_continuous(limits =
c(140000, 260000))

Regards,

Thierry

------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
ir. Thierry Onkelinx
Instituut voor natuur- en bosonderzoek / Research Institute for Nature
and Forest
Cel biometrie, methodologie en kwaliteitszorg / Section biometrics,
methodology and quality assurance
Gaverstraat 4
9500 Geraardsbergen
Belgium
tel. + 32 54/436 185
Thierry.Onkelinx at inbo.be
www.inbo.be

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#
If you use coord_equal on data where the range on the x-axis is larger
than the range on the y-axis, then of course you'll observe extra
space on the y-axis. What did you expect?

Also, this post may be better suited to the ggplot2 mailing list:
http://had.co.nz/ggplot2/

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 7:17 AM, ONKELINX, Thierry
<Thierry.ONKELINX at inbo.be> wrote:

  
    
#
ONKELINX, Thierry <Thierry.ONKELINX <at> inbo.be> writes:
I think you need to set ratio in addition to cut off the extra space.
(Not tried)
Equal scales. coord_equal ensures that the x and y axes have equal scales: i.e.
1 cm along the x axis represents the same range of data as 1 cm along the y
axis. By default it will assume that you want a one-to-one ratio, but you can
change this with the ratio parameter. The aspect ratio will also be set to
ensure that the mapping is maintained regardless of the shape of the output
device. See the documentation of coord_equal() for more details.

Dieter
#
Dear Dieter,

I tried that. But it rescales one of the axis. The resulting graph is
still square. But now 1 cm Y-axis equal 2.5 cm on the X-axis. This seems
not te be the documented behaviour. 

ggplot(ds, aes(x = x, y = y)) + geom_point() + coord_equal(ratio = 2/5)