Question

This is kinda a build-on on my previous post creating an stacked area/bar plot with missing values (all the script I run can be found there). In this post, however, Im asking if its possible to leave a gap in an continuous x axis? I have a time-serie (month-by-month) over a year, but for one sample one month is missing and I would like to show this month as a complete gap in the plot. Almost like plotting a graph for Jan-Aug (Sep is missing) and one for Oct-Dec and merging these with a gap for Sep.

The only things I have come up trying are treating the missing month as zero or NA, creating a hugh drop in the area chart for Sep or excluding it but with an x axis ranging from 1-11, respectively (see plots in dropbox folder).

The data set Im working on can be found in my dropbox folder and it’s named r_class.txt and you can also see the two different plots (Rplots1 and 2).

Any ideas would really be appreciated!

Answer 1

Plot the series as two separate data frames:

#Load libraries
require(ggplot2)
require(reshape)

#Code copied from your linked post:
wa=read.table('wa_class.txt', sep="", header=F, na.string="0")
names(wa)=c("Class","Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul","Aug","Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec")
wam=melt(wa)
wam$variablen=as.numeric(wam$variable)

#For readability, split the melted data frame into two separate data frames
wam1 <- wam[wam$variablen %in% 1:6,]
wam2 <- wam[wam$variablen %in% 8:12, ]

ggplot() +
  geom_area(data=wam1, aes(x=variablen, y=value, fill=Class)) +
  geom_area(data=wam2, aes(x=variablen, y=value, fill=Class))
  #and add lineranges, etc., accordingly