ggplot2 error : Discrete value supplied to continuous scale

Question

I have a dataset called "merged", which contains 3 numeric columns "pauseMedian" and "numTotalPauses" and "diff". I also have a splin

Answer 1

Now that we know the two color vars are of different types, there's the issue. You can try using a different scale for one (e.g. fill instead of color)

set.seed(123)
my_df1 <- data.frame(a=rnorm(100), b=runif(100), c=rep(1:10, 10))
my_df2 <- data.frame(a=rnorm(100), b=runif(100), c=factor(rep(LETTERS[1:5], 20)))
 
# this won't work. can't assign discrete and continuous to same scale
ggplot() +
  geom_point(data=my_df1, aes(x=a, y=b, color=c)) +
  geom_polygon(data=my_df2, aes(x=a, y=b, color=c), alpha=0.5)

Error: Discrete value supplied to continuous scale

# but use fill for polygons, and that works:
ggplot() +
  geom_point(data=my_df1, aes(x=a, y=b, color=c)) +
  geom_polygon(data=my_df2, aes(x=a, y=b, fill=c), alpha=0.5)

If you have to use the same scale (color), and can't convert the variables to the same type, see this for more info: Plotting continuous and discrete series in ggplot with facet