R – How to obtain an ‘unbalanced’ grid of ggplots

ggplot2rr-grid

With grid.arrange I can arrange multiple ggplot figures in a grid to achieve a multi-panel figure by using something like:

library(ggplot2)
library(grid)
library(gridExtra)

generate some ggplot2 plots , then

plot5 <- grid.arrange(plot4, plot1, heights=c(3/4, 1/4), ncol=1, nrow=2)

How can I obtain an 'unbalanced' 2 col layout with one plot in the entire first col and three plots in the second col?
I toyed with a 'grid-of-grids' approach by trying to use grid.arrange to plot one grid (e.g. plot5, above) against another plot, but obtained:

Error in arrangeGrob(…, as.table = as.table, clip = clip, main = main, :
input must be grobs!

Update:

Thanks for the advice. I will look into viewports and grid. In the meantime, thanks to @DWin, the layOut function in the 'wq' package worked very well for the compilation figure in my Sweave document:
enter image description here

Update 2:

The arrangeGrobcommand (as suggested by @baptiste) also works well, and seems very intuitive – at least it was easy to alter widths of the two columns. It also has the benefit of not requiring the `wq' package.

e.g. Here is the code from my Sweave file:

<<label=fig5plot, echo=F, results=hide>>=
plot5<-grid.arrange(plot4, arrangeGrob(plot1, plot2, plot3, ncol=1), 
                    ncol=2, widths=c(1,1.2))
@
\begin{figure}[]
    \begin{center}
<<label=fig5,fig=TRUE,echo=T, width=10,height=12>>=
<<fig5plot>>
@
\end{center}
\caption{Combined plots using the `arrangeGrob' command.}
\label{fig:five}
\end{figure}

which produces the following output:
enter image description here

BTW, Anyone tell me why the '>NA' appears?

Best Answer

grid.arrange draws directly on the device; if you want to combine it with other grid objects you need arrangeGrob, as in

 p = rectGrob()
 grid.arrange(p, arrangeGrob(p,p,p, heights=c(3/4, 1/4, 1/4), ncol=1),
              ncol=2)

Edit (07/2015): with v>2.0.0 you can use the layout_matrix argument,

 grid.arrange(p,p,p,p, layout_matrix = cbind(c(1,1,1), c(2,3,4)))

Providing a minimal dataset

Usually, sharing huge data sets is not necessary and may rather discourage others from reading your question. Therefore, it is better to use built-in datasets or create a small "toy" example that resembles your original data, which is actually what is meant by minimal. If for some reason you really need to share your original data, you should use a method, such as dput(), that allows others to get an exact copy of your data.

Built-in datasets

You can use one of the built-in datasets. A comprehensive list of built-in datasets can be seen with data(). There is a short description of every data set, and more information can be obtained, e.g. with ?iris, for the 'iris' data set that comes with R. Installed packages might contain additional datasets.

Creating example data sets

Preliminary note: Sometimes you may need special formats (i.e. classes), such as factors, dates, or time series. For these, make use of functions like: as.factor, as.Date, as.xts, ... Example:

d <- as.Date("2020-12-30")

where

class(d)
# [1] "Date"

Vectors

x <- rnorm(10)  ## random vector normal distributed
x <- runif(10)  ## random vector uniformly distributed    
x <- sample(1:100, 10)  ## 10 random draws out of 1, 2, ..., 100    
x <- sample(LETTERS, 10)  ## 10 random draws out of built-in latin alphabet

Matrices

m <- matrix(1:12, 3, 4, dimnames=list(LETTERS[1:3], LETTERS[1:4]))
m
#   A B C  D
# A 1 4 7 10
# B 2 5 8 11
# C 3 6 9 12

Data frames

set.seed(42)  ## for sake of reproducibility
n <- 6
dat <- data.frame(id=1:n, 
                  date=seq.Date(as.Date("2020-12-26"), as.Date("2020-12-31"), "day"),
                  group=rep(LETTERS[1:2], n/2),
                  age=sample(18:30, n, replace=TRUE),
                  type=factor(paste("type", 1:n)),
                  x=rnorm(n))
dat
#   id       date group age   type         x
# 1  1 2020-12-26     A  27 type 1 0.0356312
# 2  2 2020-12-27     B  19 type 2 1.3149588
# 3  3 2020-12-28     A  20 type 3 0.9781675
# 4  4 2020-12-29     B  26 type 4 0.8817912
# 5  5 2020-12-30     A  26 type 5 0.4822047
# 6  6 2020-12-31     B  28 type 6 0.9657529

^{Note: Although it is widely used, better do not name your data frame df, because df() is an R function for the density (i.e. height of the curve at point x) of the F distribution and you might get a clash with it.}

Copying original data

If you have a specific reason, or data that would be too difficult to construct an example from, you could provide a small subset of your original data, best by using dput.

Why use dput()?

dput throws all information needed to exactly reproduce your data on your console. You may simply copy the output and paste it into your question.

Calling dat (from above) produces output that still lacks information about variable classes and other features if you share it in your question. Furthermore the spaces in the type column make it difficult to do anything with it. Even when we set out to use the data, we won't manage to get important features of your data right.

  id       date group age   type         x
1  1 2020-12-26     A  27 type 1 0.0356312
2  2 2020-12-27     B  19 type 2 1.3149588
3  3 2020-12-28     A  20 type 3 0.9781675

Subset your data

Tho share a subset, use head(), subset() or the indices iris[1:4, ]. Then wrap it into dput() to give others something that can be put in R immediately. Example

dput(iris[1:4, ]) # first four rows of the iris data set

Console output to share in your question:

structure(list(Sepal.Length = c(5.1, 4.9, 4.7, 4.6), Sepal.Width = c(3.5, 
3, 3.2, 3.1), Petal.Length = c(1.4, 1.4, 1.3, 1.5), Petal.Width = c(0.2, 
0.2, 0.2, 0.2), Species = structure(c(1L, 1L, 1L, 1L), .Label = c("setosa", 
"versicolor", "virginica"), class = "factor")), row.names = c(NA, 
4L), class = "data.frame")

When using dput, you may also want to include only relevant columns, e.g. dput(mtcars[1:3, c(2, 5, 6)])

_{Note: If your data frame has a factor with many levels, the dput output can be unwieldy because it will still list all the possible factor levels even if they aren't present in the the subset of your data. To solve this issue, you can use the droplevels() function. Notice below how species is a factor with only one level, e.g. dput(droplevels(iris[1:4, ])). One other caveat for dput is that it will not work for keyed data.table objects or for grouped tbl_df (class grouped_df) from the tidyverse. In these cases you can convert back to a regular data frame before sharing, dput(as.data.frame(my_data)).}

Producing minimal code

Combined with the minimal data (see above), your code should exactly reproduce the problem on another machine by simply copying and pasting it.

This should be the easy part but often isn't. What you should not do:

showing all kinds of data conversions; make sure the provided data is already in the correct format (unless that is the problem, of course)
copy-paste a whole script that gives an error somewhere. Try to locate which lines exactly result in the error. More often than not, you'll find out what the problem is yourself.

What you should do:

add which packages you use if you use any (using library())
test run your code in a fresh R session to ensure the code is runnable. People should be able to copy-paste your data and your code in the console and get the same as you have.
if you open connections or create files, add some code to close them or delete the files (using unlink())
if you change options, make sure the code contains a statement to revert them back to the original ones. (eg op <- par(mfrow=c(1,2)) ...some code... par(op) )

Providing necessary information

In most cases, just the R version and the operating system will suffice. When conflicts arise with packages, giving the output of sessionInfo() can really help. When talking about connections to other applications (be it through ODBC or anything else), one should also provide version numbers for those, and if possible, also the necessary information on the setup.

If you are running R in R Studio, using rstudioapi::versionInfo() can help report your RStudio version.

If you have a problem with a specific package, you may want to provide the package version by giving the output of packageVersion("name of the package").

Seed

Using set.seed() you may specify a seed¹, i.e. the specific state, R's random number generator is fixed. This makes it possible for random functions, such as sample(), rnorm(), runif() and lots of others, to always return the same result, Example:

set.seed(42)
rnorm(3)
# [1]  1.3709584 -0.5646982  0.3631284

set.seed(42)
rnorm(3)
# [1]  1.3709584 -0.5646982  0.3631284

¹_{Note: The output of set.seed() differs between R >3.6.0 and previous versions. Specify which R version you used for the random process, and don't be surprised if you get slightly different results when following old questions. To get the same result in such cases, you can use the RNGversion()-function before set.seed() (e.g.: RNGversion("3.5.2")).}

R – Align multiple ggplot2 plots with grid

A cleaner way of doing the same thing but in a more generic way is by using the formatter arg:

p1 <- ggplot(data1) +
    aes(x=x, y=y, colour=x) +
    geom_line() + 
    scale_y_continuous(formatter = function(x) format(x, width = 5))

Do the same for your second plot and make sure to set the width >= the widest number you expect across both plots.