R help - Mar 2009 - ggplot: order of numeric factor levels?

Hi,

I'm having problems with qplot and the order of numeric factor levels.

Factors with numeric levels show up in the order in which they appear
in the data, not in the order of the levels (as far as I understand
factors!)

Here is a minimal example:

library(ggplot2)
y <- c(-1,2,0,0,-2,-1)
z <- factor(y,levels=c(-2,-1,0,1,2))
qplot(z)

For me, the resulting plot is ordered: -1,2,0,-2

By contrast, 
plot(z) is neatly ordered -2,-1,0,1,2

What am I not getting?

Thanks for any pointers,

Marianne

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:01 PM, Marianne Promberger
<mpromber at psych.upenn.edu> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm having problems with qplot and the order of numeric factor levels.
>
> Factors with numeric levels show up in the order in which they appear
> in the data, not in the order of the levels (as far as I understand
> factors!)
>
> Here is a minimal example:
>
> library(ggplot2)
> y <- c(-1,2,0,0,-2,-1)
> z <- factor(y,levels=c(-2,-1,0,1,2))
> qplot(z)
>
> For me, the resulting plot is ordered: -1,2,0,-2
>
> By contrast,
> plot(z) is neatly ordered -2,-1,0,1,2
>
> What am I not getting?
It's a bug in the current version.  You can fix it by explicitly
setting the limits for the x axis - +
xlim("-2","-1","0","1","2")).
It will be fixed in the next release which I'm trying to get out soon.

Hadley


-- 
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