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ggplot2 (version 2.1.0)

geom_density: Display a smooth density estimate.

Description

A kernel density estimate, useful for display the distribution of variables with underlying smoothness.

Usage

geom_density(mapping = NULL, data = NULL, stat = "density", position = "identity", ..., na.rm = FALSE, show.legend = NA, inherit.aes = TRUE)
stat_density(mapping = NULL, data = NULL, geom = "area", position = "stack", ..., bw = "nrd0", adjust = 1, kernel = "gaussian", trim = FALSE, na.rm = FALSE, show.legend = NA, inherit.aes = TRUE)

Arguments

mapping
Set of aesthetic mappings created by aes or aes_. If specified and inherit.aes = TRUE (the default), it is combined with the default mapping at the top level of the plot. You must supply mapping if there is no plot mapping.
data
The data to be displayed in this layer. There are three options:

If NULL, the default, the data is inherited from the plot data as specified in the call to ggplot.

A data.frame, or other object, will override the plot data. All objects will be fortified to produce a data frame. See fortify for which variables will be created.

A function will be called with a single argument, the plot data. The return value must be a data.frame., and will be used as the layer data.

position
Position adjustment, either as a string, or the result of a call to a position adjustment function.
...
other arguments passed on to layer. These are often aesthetics, used to set an aesthetic to a fixed value, like color = "red" or size = 3. They may also be parameters to the paired geom/stat.
na.rm
If FALSE (the default), removes missing values with a warning. If TRUE silently removes missing values.
show.legend
logical. Should this layer be included in the legends? NA, the default, includes if any aesthetics are mapped. FALSE never includes, and TRUE always includes.
inherit.aes
If FALSE, overrides the default aesthetics, rather than combining with them. This is most useful for helper functions that define both data and aesthetics and shouldn't inherit behaviour from the default plot specification, e.g. borders.
geom, stat
Use to override the default connection between geom_density and stat_density.
bw
the smoothing bandwidth to be used, see density for details
adjust
adjustment of the bandwidth, see density for details
kernel
kernel used for density estimation, see density for details
trim
This parameter only matters if you are displaying multiple densities in one plot. If FALSE, the default, each density is computed on the full range of the data. If TRUE, each density is computed over the range of that group: this typically means the estimated x values will not line-up, and hence you won't be able to stack density values.

Aesthetics

geom_density understands the following aesthetics (required aesthetics are in bold):
  • x
  • y
  • alpha
  • colour
  • fill
  • linetype
  • size
  • weight

Computed variables

density
density estimate
count
density * number of points - useful for stacked density plots
scaled
density estimate, scaled to maximum of 1

See Also

See geom_histogram, geom_freqpoly for other methods of displaying continuous distribution. See geom_violin for a compact density display.

Examples

Run this code
ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat)) +
  geom_density()

ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat)) +
  geom_density(adjust = 1/5)
ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat)) +
  geom_density(adjust = 5)

ggplot(diamonds, aes(depth, colour = cut)) +
  geom_density() +
  xlim(55, 70)
ggplot(diamonds, aes(depth, fill = cut, colour = cut)) +
  geom_density(alpha = 0.1) +
  xlim(55, 70)


# Stacked density plots: if you want to create a stacked density plot, you
# probably want to 'count' (density * n) variable instead of the default
# density

# Loses marginal densities
ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat, fill = cut)) +
  geom_density(position = "stack")
# Preserves marginal densities
ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat, ..count.., fill = cut)) +
  geom_density(position = "stack")

# You can use position="fill" to produce a conditional density estimate
ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat, ..count.., fill = cut)) +
  geom_density(position = "fill")

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