A box and whiskers plot (in the style of Tukey)

The boxplot compactly displays the distribution of a continuous variable. It visualises five summary statistics (the median, two hinges and two whiskers), and all "outlying" points individually.

Usage

geom_boxplot(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = NULL,
  stat = "boxplot",
  position = "dodge2",
  ...,
  outliers = TRUE,
  outlier.colour = NULL,
  outlier.color = NULL,
  outlier.fill = NULL,
  outlier.shape = 19,
  outlier.size = 1.5,
  outlier.stroke = 0.5,
  outlier.alpha = NULL,
  notch = FALSE,
  notchwidth = 0.5,
  staplewidth = 0,
  varwidth = FALSE,
  na.rm = FALSE,
  orientation = NA,
  show.legend = NA,
  inherit.aes = TRUE
)

stat_boxplot(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = NULL,
  geom = "boxplot",
  position = "dodge2",
  ...,
  coef = 1.5,
  na.rm = FALSE,
  orientation = NA,
  show.legend = NA,
  inherit.aes = TRUE
)

Arguments

mapping

Set of aesthetic mappings created by 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. A function can be created from a formula (e.g. ~ head(.x, 10)).

position

A position adjustment to use on the data for this layer. This can be used in various ways, including to prevent overplotting and improving the display. The position argument accepts the following:

The result of calling a position function, such as position_jitter(). This method allows for passing extra arguments to the position.
A string naming the position adjustment. To give the position as a string, strip the function name of the position_ prefix. For example, to use position_jitter(), give the position as "jitter".
For more information and other ways to specify the position, see the layer position documentation.

...

Other arguments passed on to layer()'s params argument. These arguments broadly fall into one of 4 categories below. Notably, further arguments to the position argument, or aesthetics that are required can not be passed through .... Unknown arguments that are not part of the 4 categories below are ignored.

Static aesthetics that are not mapped to a scale, but are at a fixed value and apply to the layer as a whole. For example, colour = "red" or linewidth = 3. The geom's documentation has an Aesthetics section that lists the available options. The 'required' aesthetics cannot be passed on to the params. Please note that while passing unmapped aesthetics as vectors is technically possible, the order and required length is not guaranteed to be parallel to the input data.
When constructing a layer using a stat_*() function, the ... argument can be used to pass on parameters to the geom part of the layer. An example of this is stat_density(geom = "area", outline.type = "both"). The geom's documentation lists which parameters it can accept.
Inversely, when constructing a layer using a geom_*() function, the ... argument can be used to pass on parameters to the stat part of the layer. An example of this is geom_area(stat = "density", adjust = 0.5). The stat's documentation lists which parameters it can accept.
The key_glyph argument of layer() may also be passed on through .... This can be one of the functions described as key glyphs, to change the display of the layer in the legend.

outliers

Whether to display (TRUE) or discard (FALSE) outliers from the plot. Hiding or discarding outliers can be useful when, for example, raw data points need to be displayed on top of the boxplot. By discarding outliers, the axis limits will adapt to the box and whiskers only, not the full data range. If outliers need to be hidden and the axes needs to show the full data range, please use outlier.shape = NA instead.

outlier.colour, outlier.color, outlier.fill, outlier.shape, outlier.size, outlier.stroke, outlier.alpha

Default aesthetics for outliers. Set to NULL to inherit from the aesthetics used for the box.

In the unlikely event you specify both US and UK spellings of colour, the US spelling will take precedence.

notch

If FALSE (default) make a standard box plot. If TRUE, make a notched box plot. Notches are used to compare groups; if the notches of two boxes do not overlap, this suggests that the medians are significantly different.

notchwidth

For a notched box plot, width of the notch relative to the body (defaults to notchwidth = 0.5).

staplewidth

The relative width of staples to the width of the box. Staples mark the ends of the whiskers with a line.

varwidth

If FALSE (default) make a standard box plot. If TRUE, boxes are drawn with widths proportional to the square-roots of the number of observations in the groups (possibly weighted, using the weight aesthetic).

na.rm

If FALSE, the default, missing values are removed with a warning. If TRUE, missing values are silently removed.

orientation

The orientation of the layer. The default (NA) automatically determines the orientation from the aesthetic mapping. In the rare event that this fails it can be given explicitly by setting orientation to either "x" or "y". See the Orientation section for more detail.

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. It can also be a named logical vector to finely select the aesthetics to display.

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_boxplot() and stat_boxplot(). For more information about overriding these connections, see how the stat and geom arguments work.

coef

Length of the whiskers as multiple of IQR. Defaults to 1.5.

Orientation

This geom treats each axis differently and, thus, can thus have two orientations. Often the orientation is easy to deduce from a combination of the given mappings and the types of positional scales in use. Thus, ggplot2 will by default try to guess which orientation the layer should have. Under rare circumstances, the orientation is ambiguous and guessing may fail. In that case the orientation can be specified directly using the orientation parameter, which can be either "x" or "y". The value gives the axis that the geom should run along, "x" being the default orientation you would expect for the geom.

Summary statistics

The lower and upper hinges correspond to the first and third quartiles (the 25th and 75th percentiles). This differs slightly from the method used by the boxplot() function, and may be apparent with small samples. See boxplot.stats() for more information on how hinge positions are calculated for boxplot().

The upper whisker extends from the hinge to the largest value no further than 1.5 * IQR from the hinge (where IQR is the inter-quartile range, or distance between the first and third quartiles). The lower whisker extends from the hinge to the smallest value at most 1.5 * IQR of the hinge. Data beyond the end of the whiskers are called "outlying" points and are plotted individually.

In a notched box plot, the notches extend 1.58 * IQR / sqrt(n). This gives a roughly 95% confidence interval for comparing medians. See McGill et al. (1978) for more details.

Aesthetics

geom_boxplot() understands the following aesthetics (required aesthetics are in bold):

x or y
lower or xlower
upper or xupper
middle or xmiddle
ymin or xmin
ymax or xmax
alpha
colour
fill
group
linetype
linewidth
shape
size
weight

Learn more about setting these aesthetics in vignette("ggplot2-specs").

Computed variables

These are calculated by the 'stat' part of layers and can be accessed with delayed evaluation. stat_boxplot() provides the following variables, some of which depend on the orientation:

after_stat(width)
width of boxplot.
after_stat(ymin) or after_stat(xmin)
lower whisker = smallest observation greater than or equal to lower hinger - 1.5 * IQR.
after_stat(lower) or after_stat(xlower)
lower hinge, 25% quantile.
after_stat(notchlower)
lower edge of notch = median - 1.58 * IQR / sqrt(n).
after_stat(middle) or after_stat(xmiddle)
median, 50% quantile.
after_stat(notchupper)
upper edge of notch = median + 1.58 * IQR / sqrt(n).
after_stat(upper) or after_stat(xupper)
upper hinge, 75% quantile.
after_stat(ymax) or after_stat(xmax)
upper whisker = largest observation less than or equal to upper hinger + 1.5 * IQR.

References

McGill, R., Tukey, J. W. and Larsen, W. A. (1978) Variations of box plots. The American Statistician 32, 12-16.

Examples

p <- ggplot(mpg, aes(class, hwy))
p + geom_boxplot()

# Orientation follows the discrete axis
ggplot(mpg, aes(hwy, class)) + geom_boxplot()


p + geom_boxplot(notch = TRUE)
#> Notch went outside hinges
#> ℹ Do you want `notch = FALSE`?
#> Notch went outside hinges
#> ℹ Do you want `notch = FALSE`?

p + geom_boxplot(varwidth = TRUE)

p + geom_boxplot(fill = "white", colour = "#3366FF")

# By default, outlier points match the colour of the box. Use
# outlier.colour to override
p + geom_boxplot(outlier.colour = "red", outlier.shape = 1)

# Remove outliers when overlaying boxplot with original data points
p + geom_boxplot(outlier.shape = NA) + geom_jitter(width = 0.2)


# Boxplots are automatically dodged when any aesthetic is a factor
p + geom_boxplot(aes(colour = drv))


# You can also use boxplots with continuous x, as long as you supply
# a grouping variable. cut_width is particularly useful
ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat, price)) +
  geom_boxplot()
#> Warning: Continuous x aesthetic
#> ℹ did you forget `aes(group = ...)`?

ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat, price)) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(group = cut_width(carat, 0.25)))

# Adjust the transparency of outliers using outlier.alpha
ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat, price)) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(group = cut_width(carat, 0.25)), outlier.alpha = 0.1)


# \donttest{
# It's possible to draw a boxplot with your own computations if you
# use stat = "identity":
set.seed(1)
y <- rnorm(100)
df <- data.frame(
  x = 1,
  y0 = min(y),
  y25 = quantile(y, 0.25),
  y50 = median(y),
  y75 = quantile(y, 0.75),
  y100 = max(y)
)
ggplot(df, aes(x)) +
  geom_boxplot(
   aes(ymin = y0, lower = y25, middle = y50, upper = y75, ymax = y100),
   stat = "identity"
 )

# }