ggplots order bars based on value within the bar

Question

I would like to reorder the bars in a stacked bay plot based on the values within a bar. My data is percentage male contribution to a nest so all of the bars sum to one. What I would like to do is order the bars based on the contribution from the third male.

My data looks like this

Nest.ID Percentage  Male
6_2012  0.611111111 Primary
6_2012  0.222222222 Secondary
6_2012  0.166666667 Tertiary
7_2012  0.46875     Primary
7_2012  0.3125      Secondary
7_2012  0.21875     Tertiary

and I am creating my graph with this code:

m <- ggplot()+geom_bar(aes(y=Percentage, x=Nest.ID,
                    fill=forcats::fct_rev(Male)),
                   data=males,stat="identity")

I have tried to use the reorder function but have run into issues because all the nests sum to one and the value I would like to order by "Tertiary Male" is a factor within a column.

please post the `dput()` output for the `males` dataframe you are using — user5359531, Jun 07 '18 at 19:55
Possible duplicate of [Order Bars in ggplot2 bar graph](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5208679/order-bars-in-ggplot2-bar-graph) — divibisan, Jun 07 '18 at 20:01

Gregor Thomas · Answer 1 · 2018-06-07T19:58:46.583

reorder works well when you are doing a relatively simple function of a single variable for the order. You're doing something a little more specific and depending on two variables, so I would just pull the order and set it explicitly.

my_order = with(males[males$Male == "Tertiary", ], as.character(Nest.ID[order(Percentage)]))
males$Nest.ID = factor(males$Nest.ID, levels = my_order)

As a side note, use geom_col(...) instead of geom_bar(..., stat = "identity").

ggplots order bars based on value within the bar

1 Answers1