How to deal with “data of class uneval” error from ggplot2?

Question

While trying to overlay a new line to a existing ggplot I am getting the following error:

Error: ggplot2 doesn\'t know how to deal with data of class uneval         


        

Answer 1

This could also occur if you refer to a variable in the data.frame that doesn't exist. For example, recently I forgot to tell ddply to summarize by one of my variables that I used in geom_line to specify line color. Then, ggplot didn't know where to find the variable I hadn't created in the summary table, and I got this error.

Answer 2

Another cause is accidentally putting the data=... inside the aes(...) instead of outside:

RIGHT:
ggplot(data=df[df$var7=='9-06',], aes(x=lifetime,y=rep_rate,group=mdcp,color=mdcp) ...)

WRONG:
ggplot(aes(data=df[df$var7=='9-06',],x=lifetime,y=rep_rate,group=mdcp,color=mdcp) ...)

In particular this can happen when you prototype your plot command with qplot(), which doesn't use an explicit aes(), then edit/copy-and-paste it into a ggplot()

qplot(data=..., x=...,y=..., ...)

ggplot(data=..., aes(x=...,y=...,...))

It's a pity ggplot's error message isn't Missing 'data' argument! instead of this cryptic nonsense, because that's what this message often means.

Answer 3

when you add a new data set to a geom you need to use the data= argument. Or put the arguments in the proper order mapping=..., data=.... Take a look at the arguments for ?geom_line.

Thus:

p + geom_line(data=df.last, aes(HrEnd, MWh, group=factor(Date)), color="red") 

Or:

p + geom_line(aes(HrEnd, MWh, group=factor(Date)), df.last, color="red")