Plotting a grid behind data, not in front in R

Question

I like to produce my own grid lines when plotting so I can control tick marks, etc. and I am struggling with this with the \'hist\' plotting routine.

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Answer 1

This is relatively easy.

Generate the histogram but don't plot it.

h <- hist(y, plot = FALSE)

Now generate your base plot... I've added some features to make it look more like a standard historgram

plot(h$mids, h$counts, ylim = c(0, max(h$counts)), xlim = range(h$mids)*1.1, 
    type = 'n', bty = 'n', xlab = 'y', ylab = 'Counts', main = 'Histogram of y')

add your grid

grid()

add your histogram

hist(y, add = TRUE)

Or, as I discovered through this process... you can do it even easier

hist(y)
grid()
hist(y, add = TRUE, col = 'white')

This last method is just redrawing the histogram over the grid.