Question

I wonder how to change the facet label to math formula in ggplot2.

d <- ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat, price, fill = ..density..)) +
  xlim(0, 2) + stat_binhex(na.rm = TRUE) + opts(aspect.ratio = 1)
d + facet_wrap(~ color, ncol = 4)

For example, I want to change facet label from D to Y[1], where 1 is subscript. Thanks in advance for your help.

I found this answer but it does not work for me. I’m using R 2.15.1 and ggplot2 0.9.1.

Answer 1

Perhaps somebody has changed the name of the edit-Grob function at some point. (Edit: It was removed by @hadley about 8 months ago.) There is no geditGrob but just editGrob from pkg:grid seems to work:

 d <- ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat, price, fill = ..density..)) +
              xlim(0, 2) + stat_binhex(na.rm = TRUE) + opts(aspect.ratio = 1)

 #Note: changes in ggplot2 functions cause this to fail from the very beginning now.
 # Frank Harrell's answer this year suggests `facet_warp` now accepts `labeller`


 d <- d + facet_wrap(~ color, ncol = 4)
 grob <- ggplotGrob(d)
 strip_elem <- grid.ls(getGrob(grob, "strip.text.x", grep=TRUE, global=TRUE))$name
#strip.text.x.text.1535
#strip.text.x.text.1541
#strip.text.x.text.1547
#strip.text.x.text.1553
#strip.text.x.text.1559
#strip.text.x.text.1565
#strip.text.x.text.1571
grob <- editGrob(grob, strip_elem[1], label=expression(Y[1]))
grid.draw(grob)