What I want to achieve is exactly the same that was already asked here (and specifically using R\'s base graphics, not packages like ggplot or lattice
I get the following,
num <- c(1, 8, 4, 3, 6, 7, 5, 2, 11, 3)
cat <- c(letters[1:10])
data <- data.frame(num, cat)
barplot(data[order(data[,1],decreasing=TRUE),][,1],names.arg=data[order(data[,1],decreasing=TRUE),][,2])
The above code uses the order() function twice (see comments, below). To avoid doing this the results of the ordered data.frame can be stored in a new data.frame and this can be used to generate the barplot.
num <- c(1, 8, 4, 3, 6, 7, 5, 2, 11, 3)
cat <- c(letters[1:10])
data <- data.frame(num, cat)
data2 <- data[order(data[,1],decreasing=TRUE),]
barplot(data2[,1],names.arg=data2[,2])