Understanding dates and plotting a histogram with ggplot2 in R

UPDATE

Version 2: Using Date class

I update the example to demonstrate aligning the labels and setting limits on the plot. I also demonstrate that as.Date does indeed work when used consistently (actually it is probably a better fit for your data than my earlier example).

The Target Plot v2

https://i.stack.imgur.com/exn5E.png

The Code v2

And here is (somewhat excessively) commented code:

library("ggplot2")
library("scales")

dates <- read.csv("http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=sDzXKFxJ", sep=",", header=T)
dates$Date <- as.Date(dates$Date)

# convert the Date to its numeric equivalent
# Note that Dates are stored as number of days internally,
# hence it is easy to convert back and forth mentally
dates$num <- as.numeric(dates$Date)

bin <- 60 # used for aggregating the data and aligning the labels

p <- ggplot(dates, aes(num, ..count..))
p <- p + geom_histogram(binwidth = bin, colour="white")

# The numeric data is treated as a date,
# breaks are set to an interval equal to the binwidth,
# and a set of labels is generated and adjusted in order to align with bars
p <- p + scale_x_date(breaks = seq(min(dates$num)-20, # change -20 term to taste
                                   max(dates$num), 
                                   bin),
                      labels = date_format("%Y-%b"),
                      limits = c(as.Date("2009-01-01"), 
                                 as.Date("2011-12-01")))

# from here, format at ease
p <- p + theme_bw() + xlab(NULL) + opts(axis.text.x  = theme_text(angle=45,
                                                                  hjust = 1,
                                                                  vjust = 1))
p

Version 1: Using POSIXct

I try a solution that does everything in ggplot2, drawing without the aggregation, and setting the limits on the x-axis between the beginning of 2009 and the end of 2011.

The Target Plot v1

https://i.stack.imgur.com/ia0Hd.png

The Code v1

library("ggplot2")
library("scales")

dates <- read.csv("http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=sDzXKFxJ", sep=",", header=T)
dates$Date <- as.POSIXct(dates$Date)

p <- ggplot(dates, aes(Date, ..count..)) + 
    geom_histogram() +
    theme_bw() + xlab(NULL) +
    scale_x_datetime(breaks = date_breaks("3 months"),
                     labels = date_format("%Y-%b"),
                     limits = c(as.POSIXct("2009-01-01"), 
                                as.POSIXct("2011-12-01")) )

p

Of course, it could do with playing with the label options on the axis, but this is to round off the plotting with a clean short routine in the plotting package.

I know this is an old question, but for anybody coming to this in 2021 (or later), this can be done much easier using the breaks= argument for geom_histogram() and creating a little shortcut function to make the required sequence.

dates <- read.csv("http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=sDzXKFxJ", sep=",", header=T)

dates$Date <- lubridate::ymd(dates$Date)

by_month <- function(x,n=1){
  seq(min(x,na.rm=T),max(x,na.rm=T),by=paste0(n," months"))
}

ggplot(dates,aes(Date)) +
  geom_histogram(breaks = by_month(dates$Date)) +
  scale_x_date(labels = scales::date_format("%Y-%b"),
               breaks = by_month(dates$Date,2)) + 
  theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle=90))

https://i.stack.imgur.com/uWCVC.png

I think the key thing is that you need to do the frequency calculation outside of ggplot. Use aggregate() with geom_bar(stat="identity") to get a histogram without the reordered factors. Here is some example code:

require(ggplot2)

# scales goes with ggplot and adds the needed scale* functions
require(scales)

# need the month() function for the extra plot
require(lubridate)

# original data
#df<-read.csv("http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=sDzXKFxJ", header=TRUE)

# simulated data
years=sample(seq(2008,2012),681,replace=TRUE,prob=c(0.0176211453744493,0.302496328928047,0.323054331864905,0.237885462555066,0.118942731277533))
months=sample(seq(1,12),681,replace=TRUE)
my.dates=as.Date(paste(years,months,01,sep="-"))
df=data.frame(YM=strftime(my.dates, format="%Y-%b"),Date=my.dates,Year=years,Month=months)
# end simulated data creation

# sort the list just to make it pretty. It makes no difference in the final results
df=df[do.call(order, df[c("Date")]), ]

# add a dummy column for clarity in processing
df$Count=1

# compute the frequencies ourselves
freqs=aggregate(Count ~ Year + Month, data=df, FUN=length)

# rebuild the Date column so that ggplot works
freqs$Date=as.Date(paste(freqs$Year,freqs$Month,"01",sep="-"))

# I set the breaks for 2 months to reduce clutter
g<-ggplot(data=freqs,aes(x=Date,y=Count))+ geom_bar(stat="identity") + scale_x_date(labels=date_format("%Y-%b"),breaks="2 months") + theme_bw() + opts(axis.text.x = theme_text(angle=90))
print(g)

# don't overwrite the previous graph
dev.new()

# just for grins, here is a faceted view by year
# Add the Month.name factor to have things work. month() keeps the factor levels in order
freqs$Month.name=month(freqs$Date,label=TRUE, abbr=TRUE)
g2<-ggplot(data=freqs,aes(x=Month.name,y=Count))+ geom_bar(stat="identity") + facet_grid(Year~.) + theme_bw()
print(g2)

The error graph this under the title "Plot based on Gauden's approach" is due to the binwidth parameter: ... + Geom_histogram (binwidth = 30, color = "white") + ... If we change the value of 30 to a value less than 20, such as 10, you will get all frequencies.

In statistics the values are more important than the presentation is more important a bland graphic to a very pretty picture but with errors.