Is there a way to group values on the x axis of a ggplot in rstudio

Question

I am making a column plot using ggplot to show percentages of populations with water access in different countries. I pivoted the data to create a column for country, population type, and percentage for ease of graphing, but it is resulting in a cluttered axis.

sample data:

country = c(benin, benin, benin, burkina faso, burkina faso, burkina faso)
population = c(rural, urban, total, rural, urban, total) percent = c(70, 80, 75, 60, 70, 65)

I ran this code:

ggplot() + 
geom_col(data = access_plot,
aes(x = country,
y = percent,
fill = population),
position = position_dodge(3.5), width = 4)

I expected to have each country listed once on the x axis with columns arranged side by side by population type. Instead, each country was listed 3 times and all columns/axis labels were overlapping

Answer 1

Your issue is related to your position_dodge and width values. You need to adjust those values to "standard" values if you don't want your columns to overlap. Example :

ggplot() + 
  geom_col(data = access_plot,
           aes(x = country,
               y = percent,
               fill = population),
           position = position_dodge(0.75), width = 0.7)