Question

I have noticed that the default for filling the bars in a histogram created using plot is the reverse alphabetical, while the legend in ordered alphabetically. I there any way to get both to order alphabetically? Problem is apparent in example plot below. Bonus question: how I change the left to right bar order from alphabetical to decreasing count total? Thanks

df <- data.frame(
  Site=c("A05","R17","R01","A05","R17","R01"),
  Group=c("Fungia","Fungia","Acro","Acro","Porites","Porites"),
  Count=c(6,8,6,7,2,9),
  Total=c(13,10,15,13,10,15)
)

  Site   Group Count Total
1  A05  Fungia     6    13
2  R17  Fungia     8    10
3  R01    Acro     6    15
4  A05    Acro     7    13
5  R17 Porites     2    10
6  R01 Porites     9    15

qplot(df$Site,data=df,weight=df$Count,geom="histogram", fill=df$Group, ylim = c(0,16)) + 
  xlab("Sites") + 
  ylab("Counts") + 
  scale_fill_hue(h=c(0,360), l=70, c=70,name = "Emergent Groups")

I am trying to order the counts from high to low and the fill colours so that they match the alphabetic ordering of the legend. I have been trying to adjust it for a few hours with the tips from the initial posts but without sucess. Any help on this would be most appreciated!!!

Answer 1

If you just want the color order match, you can just reverse the legend: the color orders will match, but the legend will be in reverse alphabetical order:

qplot(df$Site,data=df,weight=df$Count,geom="histogram", fill=df$Group, ylim = c(0,16)) + 
  xlab("Sites") + 
  ylab("Counts") + 
  scale_fill_hue(h=c(0,360), l=70, c=70,name = "Emergent Groups") +
  guides(fill = guide_legend(reverse = TRUE))

To get the alphabetical order back, precede the above code by a reordering of the Group factor:

# reorder the groups
df$Group <- factor(df$Group , 
                   levels=levels(df$Group)[order(levels(df$Group), decreasing = TRUE)])

qplot(df$Site,data=df,weight=df$Count,geom="histogram", fill=df$Group, ylim = c(0,16)) + 
  xlab("Sites") + 
  ylab("Counts") + 
  scale_fill_hue(h=c(0,360), l=70, c=70,name = "Emergent Groups") +
  guides(fill = guide_legend(reverse = TRUE))

For the bonus (ordering the bars by decreasing total count), reorder the factor order of the Site variable:

# reorder the sites
df$Site <- factor(df$Site, 
                  levels = levels(df$Site)[order(aggregate(Count ~ Site, data = df, sum)$Count, 
                                                 decreasing = TRUE)])
# reorder the groups
df$Group <- factor(df$Group , 
                   levels=levels(df$Group)[order(levels(df$Group), decreasing = TRUE)])

qplot(df$Site,data=df,weight=df$Count,geom="histogram", fill=df$Group, ylim = c(0,16)) + 
  xlab("Sites") + 
  ylab("Counts") + 
  scale_fill_hue(h=c(0,360), l=70, c=70,name = "Emergent Groups") +
  guides(fill = guide_legend(reverse = TRUE))