Rotate histogram in R or overlay a density in a barplot

Question

I would like to rotate a histogram in R, plotted by hist(). The question is not new, and in several forums I have found that it is not possible. However, all these answers date

Answer 1

It may be helpful to know that the hist() function invisibly returns all the information that you need to reproduce what it does using simpler plotting functions, like rect().

    vals <- rnorm(10)
    A <- hist(vals)
    A
    $breaks
    [1] -1.5 -1.0 -0.5  0.0  0.5  1.0  1.5

    $counts
    [1] 1 3 3 1 1 1

    $intensities
    [1] 0.2 0.6 0.6 0.2 0.2 0.2

    $density
    [1] 0.2 0.6 0.6 0.2 0.2 0.2

    $mids
    [1] -1.25 -0.75 -0.25  0.25  0.75  1.25

    $xname
    [1] "vals"

    $equidist
    [1] TRUE

    attr(,"class")
    [1] "histogram"

You can create the same histogram manually like this:

    plot(NULL, type = "n", ylim = c(0,max(A$counts)), xlim = c(range(A$breaks)))
    rect(A$breaks[1:(length(A$breaks) - 1)], 0, A$breaks[2:length(A$breaks)], A$counts)

With those parts, you can flip the axes however you like:

    plot(NULL, type = "n", xlim = c(0, max(A$counts)), ylim = c(range(A$breaks)))
    rect(0, A$breaks[1:(length(A$breaks) - 1)], A$counts, A$breaks[2:length(A$breaks)])

For similar do-it-yourselfing with density(), see: Axis-labeling in R histogram and density plots; multiple overlays of density plots