How can I plot multiple different columns in ggplot?-CodePudding

i want to plot raw birth counts by month, stratified by year (month # is on the x axis, whereas the raw counts is on the y axis; there should be multiple lines representing each year).

Here is the structure of my data:

> dput(births_monthly_cross_022822_clean)
structure(list(month = c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
), `2010` = c(323816, 302551, 339219, 325582, 328960, 335180, 
345875, 350473, 351439, 337477, 326868, 339665), `2011` = c(321104, 
298537, 330752, 313875, 327242, 337890, 346192, 360079, 346254, 
329174, 322135, 327986), `2012` = c(316959, 305060, 324944, 307262, 
330779, 327811, 348157, 361902, 340901, 346251, 325810, 324960
), `2013` = c(324314, 292360, 321166, 312274, 330193, 320475, 
349920, 354293, 338863, 341353, 319233, 336320), `2014` = c(327154, 
299087, 324317, 319788, 335444, 326757, 356446, 355201, 349403, 
344265, 318819, 341494), `2015` = c(326747, 298815, 329714, 321618, 
328709, 331400, 354384, 352782, 348479, 339904, 319605, 336576


> head(births_monthly_cross_022822_clean)
# A tibble: 6 × 12
  month `2010` `2011` `2012` `2013` `2014` `2015` `2016` `2017` `2018` `2019` `2020`
  <dbl>  <dbl>  <dbl>  <dbl>  <dbl>  <dbl>  <dbl>  <dbl>  <dbl>  <dbl>  <dbl>  <dbl>
1     1 323816 321104 316959 324314 327154 326747 317445 314597 315593 311678 305536
2     2 302551 298537 305060 292360 299087 298815 306750 289694 284940 280679 283385
3     3 339219 330752 324944 321166 324317 329714 329341 320327 316824 304999 302331
4     4 325582 313875 307262 312274 319788 321618 314312 300801 299125 299755 290940
5     5 328960 327242 330779 330193 335444 328709 328434 323169 321448 317160 301902
6     6 335180 337890 327811 320475 326757 331400 333166 324633 315585 304843 302574

Thank you!

CodePudding user response：

Currently your data frame is in wide format, where the variable you wish to plot on the y axis (counts of births) is represented in several columns. It is much easier to plot if you reshape your data to long format, where you have a column for counts and a column that labels according to year. You can achieve this with pivot_longer from the tidyr package.

It also makes for an easier-to-understand plot if you convert month numbers into month names.

Here's how you can do all this within the tidyverse framework:

library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)

births_monthly_cross_022822_clean %>%
  pivot_longer(-1) %>%
  mutate(year = substr(name, 2, 6),
         month = factor(month.abb[month], month.abb)) %>%
  ggplot(aes(month, value, color = year, group = year))   
  geom_line()  
  theme_bw()

CodePudding user response：

You need to pivot longer your data in this way:

library(tidyverse)

births_monthly_cross_022822_clean %>% 
   pivot_longer(!month, names_to = 'year', values_to = 'q_births')