Layered axes in ggplot?

Question

I\'m wondering if it\'s possible to make layered/segmented axes in GGLPOT2 (or another graphics package; I just prefer ggplot).

What I want to do is take the below

Answer 1

Two steps to doing this:

1. Add the group=animal aesthetic to the plot (tell it to group by animal)

2. Add position="dodge" to your geom_bar layer (tell it the bars should be separate)

Thus:

ggplot(data, aes(x=period, y=value, fill=color, group=animal, color=animal)) +
        geom_bar(stat="identity", position="dodge")

This looks like:

One of the issues here is that it doesn't describe which animal is which: there isn't a particularly easy way to fix that. That's why I would probably make this plot through faceting:

ggplot(data, aes(x=animal, y=value, fill=color)) + geom_bar(stat="identity") +
    facet_wrap(~ period)