Factor order within faceted dotplot using ggplot2
ggplot2, r
Solution
Here a solution using paste, free scales and some relabeling
library(ggplot2)
London.melt$medal.type<-factor(London.melt$medal.type, levels = c("gold","silver","bronze"))
# Make every country unique
London.melt$country_l <- with(London.melt, paste(country, medal.type, sep = "_"))
#Reorder the unique countrys
q <- qplot(x = count, y = reorder(country_l, count), data = London.melt, geom = "point") + facet_grid(medal.type ~., scales = "free_y")
# Rename the countries using the original names
q + scale_y_discrete("Country", breaks = London.melt$country_l, label = London.melt$country)
Problem
I'm trying to change the plotting order within facets of a faceted dotplot in ggplot2, but I can't get it to work. Here's my melted dataset: ``` > London.melt country medal.type count 1 South Korea gold 13 2 Italy gold 8 3 France gold 11 4 Australia gold 7 5 Japan gold 7 6 Germany gold 11 7 Great Britain & N. Ireland gold 29 8 Russian Federation gold 24 9 China gold 38 10 United States gold 46 11 South Korea silver 8 12 Italy silver 9 13 France silver 11 14 Australia silver 16 15 Japan silver 14 16 Germany silver 19 17 Great Britain & N. Ireland silver 17 18 Russian Federation silver 26 19 China silver 27 20 United States silver 29 21 South Korea bronze 7 22 Italy bronze 11 23 France bronze 12 24 Australia bronze 12 25 Japan bronze 17 26 Germany bronze 14 27 Great Britain & N. Ireland bronze 19 28 Russian Federation bronze 32 29 China bronze 23 30 United States bronze 29 ``` and here's my plot command: ``` qplot(x = count, y = country, data = London.melt, geom = "point", facets = medal.type ~.) ``` The result I get is as follows: The facets themselves appear in the order I want in this plot. Within each facet, however, I'd like to sort by count. That is, for each type of medal, I'd like the country that won the greatest number of those medals on top, and so on. The procedure I have used successfully when there are no facets (say we're only looking at gold medals) is to use the `reorder` function on the factor `country`, sorting by `count` but this doesn't work in the present example. I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions you might have.