Stacked histogram from already summarized counts using ggplot2

Question

I would like some help coloring a ggplot2 histogram generated from already-summarized count data.

The data are something like counts of # males and # females living

Answer 1

Here's a hack using ggplot_build. The idea is to first get your old/original plot:

p <- ggplot(data = X, aes(x=C)) + geom_histogram()

stored in p. Then, use ggplot_build(p)$data[[1]] to extract the data, specifically, the columns xmin and xmax (to get the same breaks/binwidths of histogram) and count column (to normalize the percentage by count. Here's the code:

# get old plot
p <- ggplot(data = X, aes(x=C)) + geom_histogram()
# get data of old plot: cols = count, xmin and xmax
d <- ggplot_build(p)$data[[1]][c("count", "xmin", "xmax")]
# add a id colum for ddply
d$id <- seq(nrow(d))

How to generate data now? What I understand from your post is this. Take for example the first bar in your plot. It has a count of 2 and it extends from xmin = 147 to xmax = 156.8. When we check X for these values:

X[X$C >= 147 & X$C <= 156.8, ] # count = 2 as shown below
#    C1 C2   C
# 19 91 63 154
# 75 86 70 156

Here, I compute (91+86)/(154+156)*(count=2) = 1.141935 and (63+70)/(154+156) * (count=2) = 0.8580645 as the two normalised values for each bar we'll generate.

require(plyr)
dd <- ddply(d, .(id), function(x) {
    t <- X[X$C >= x$xmin & X$C <= x$xmax, ]
    if(nrow(t) == 0) return(c(0,0))
    p <- colSums(t)[1:2]/colSums(t)[3] * x$count
})

# then, it just normal plotting
require(reshape2)
dd <- melt(dd, id.var="id")
ggplot(data = dd, aes(x=id, y=value)) + 
      geom_bar(aes(fill=variable), stat="identity", group=1)

And this is the original plot:

And this is what I get:

Edit: If you also want to get the breaks proper, then, you can get the corresponding x coordinates from the old plot and use it here instead of id:

p <- ggplot(data = X, aes(x=C)) + geom_histogram()
d <- ggplot_build(p)$data[[1]][c("count", "x", "xmin", "xmax")]
d$id <- seq(nrow(d))

require(plyr)
dd <- ddply(d, .(id), function(x) {
    t <- X[X$C >= x$xmin & X$C <= x$xmax, ]
    if(nrow(t) == 0) return(c(x$x,0,0))
    p <- c(x=x$x, colSums(t)[1:2]/colSums(t)[3] * x$count)
})

require(reshape2)
dd.m <- melt(dd, id.var="V1", measure.var=c("V2", "V3"))
ggplot(data = dd.m, aes(x=V1, y=value)) + 
      geom_bar(aes(fill=variable), stat="identity", group=1)