How to make a timeseries boxplot in R

Question

I\'m trying to make a time series boxplot using ggplot2.

I have montly values for many individuals.

I need to make a timeseries boxplot by month

Answer 1

Updated: Based on OP's clarification that multiple years have to be handled separately.

library(ggplot2)

#generate dummy data
date_range <- as.Date("2010/06/01") + 0:400
measure <- runif(401)
mydata <- data.frame(date_range, measure)

# create new columns for the months and years, and 
# and a year_month column for x-axis labels
mydata$month <- format(date_range, format="%b")
mydata$year <- as.POSIXlt(date_range)$year + 1900
mydata$year_month <- paste(mydata$year, mydata$month)
mydata$sort_order <- mydata$year *100 + as.POSIXlt(date_range)$mon

#plot it
ggplot(mydata) + geom_boxplot(aes(x=reorder(year_month, sort_order), y=measure))

Which produces:

Hope this helps you move forward.