Ordering bar chart by value in R using ggplot2

Question

I am having trouble creating a bar chart utilizing ggplot2 that is sorted by value.

I understand that I can order the data frame by the value and then plot it. However, ggplot2 seems to ignore the ordering.

I am using the following code:

df$Frequency <- factor(dft$Frequency,  levels = df$Frequency[order(df$Frequency)])
df


# Plot the data
plot = ggplot(data=df, aes(x=Word , y=Frequency, label=Frequency)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity") + 
  geom_text(size = 5, position = position_stack(vjust = 1.04)) +
  coord_flip()
plot

The data looks like this:

   ID Word Frequency
1  70    a       194
2  48    b       116
3 139    c       104
4 293    d        87
5  12    d        87

And I get the following plot:

What am I missing?

Answer 1

You can use reorder to order you bars. You can use the following code:

df <- data.frame(ID = c(70, 48, 139, 293, 12),
                 Word = c("a", "b", "c", "d", "e"),
                 Frequency = c(194, 116, 104, 87, 87))

plot = ggplot(data=df, aes(x=reorder(Word, -Frequency) , y=Frequency, label=Frequency)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity") + 
  geom_text(size = 5, position = position_stack(vjust = 1.04)) +
  coord_flip() +
  labs(x = "Word")
plot

Output:

Use reorder(Word, Frequency):

plot = ggplot(data=df, aes(x=reorder(Word, Frequency) , y=Frequency, label=Frequency)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity") + 
  geom_text(size = 5, position = position_stack(vjust = 1.04)) +
  coord_flip() +
  labs(x = "Word")
plot

Output: