Plot labels at ends of lines

Hugh picture Hugh · Mar 31, 2015 · Viewed 84.4k times · Source

I have the following data (temp.dat see end note for full data)

   Year State     Capex
1  2003   VIC  5.356415
2  2004   VIC  5.765232
3  2005   VIC  5.247276
4  2006   VIC  5.579882
5  2007   VIC  5.142464
...

and I can produce the following chart:

ggplot(temp.dat) + 
  geom_line(aes(x = Year, y = Capex, group = State, colour = State))

enter image description here

Instead of the legend, I'd like the labels to be

  1. coloured the same as the series
  2. to the right of the last data point for each series

I've noticed baptiste's comments in the answer in the following link, but when I try to adapt his code (geom_text(aes(label = State, colour = State, x = Inf, y = Capex), hjust = -1)) the text does not appear.

ggplot2 - annotate outside of plot

temp.dat <- structure(list(Year = c("2003", "2004", "2005", "2006", "2007", 
"2008", "2009", "2010", "2011", "2012", "2013", "2014", "2003", 
"2004", "2005", "2006", "2007", "2008", "2009", "2010", "2011", 
"2012", "2013", "2014", "2003", "2004", "2005", "2006", "2007", 
"2008", "2009", "2010", "2011", "2012", "2013", "2014", "2003", 
"2004", "2005", "2006", "2007", "2008", "2009", "2010", "2011", 
"2012", "2013", "2014"), State = structure(c(1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 
1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 
2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 
4L, 4L, 4L, 4L, 4L, 4L, 4L, 4L, 4L, 4L, 4L, 4L), .Label = c("VIC", 
"NSW", "QLD", "WA"), class = "factor"), Capex = c(5.35641472365348, 
5.76523240652641, 5.24727577535625, 5.57988239709746, 5.14246402568366, 
4.96786288162828, 5.493190785287, 6.08500616799372, 6.5092228474591, 
7.03813541623157, 8.34736513875897, 9.04992300432169, 7.15830329914056, 
7.21247045701994, 7.81373928617117, 7.76610217197542, 7.9744994967006, 
7.93734452080786, 8.29289899132255, 7.85222269563982, 8.12683746325074, 
8.61903784301649, 9.7904327253813, 9.75021175267288, 8.2950673974226, 
6.6272705639724, 6.50170524635367, 6.15609626379471, 6.43799637295979, 
6.9869551384028, 8.36305663640294, 8.31382617231745, 8.65409824343971, 
9.70529678167458, 11.3102788081848, 11.8696420977237, 6.77937303542605, 
5.51242844820827, 5.35789621712839, 4.38699327451101, 4.4925792218211, 
4.29934654081527, 4.54639175257732, 4.70040615159951, 5.04056109514957, 
5.49921208937735, 5.96590909090909, 6.18700407463007)), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, 
-48L), .Names = c("Year", "State", "Capex"))

Answer

Sandy Muspratt picture Sandy Muspratt · Mar 31, 2015

To use Baptiste's idea, you need to turn off clipping. But when you do, you get garbage. In addition, you need to suppress the legend, and, for geom_text, select Capex for 2014, and increase the margin to give room for the labels. (Or you can adjust the hjust parameter to move the labels inside the plot panel.) Something like this:

library(ggplot2)
library(grid)

p = ggplot(temp.dat) + 
  geom_line(aes(x = Year, y = Capex, group = State, colour = State)) + 
  geom_text(data = subset(temp.dat, Year == "2014"), aes(label = State, colour = State, x = Inf, y = Capex), hjust = -.1) +
  scale_colour_discrete(guide = 'none')  +    
  theme(plot.margin = unit(c(1,3,1,1), "lines")) 

# Code to turn off clipping
gt <- ggplotGrob(p)
gt$layout$clip[gt$layout$name == "panel"] <- "off"
grid.draw(gt)

enter image description here

But, this is the sort of plot that is perfect for directlabels.

library(ggplot2)
library(directlabels)

ggplot(temp.dat, aes(x = Year, y = Capex, group = State, colour = State)) + 
  geom_line() +
  scale_colour_discrete(guide = 'none') +
  scale_x_discrete(expand=c(0, 1)) +
  geom_dl(aes(label = State), method = list(dl.combine("first.points", "last.points")), cex = 0.8) 

enter image description here

Edit To increase the space between the end point and the labels:

ggplot(temp.dat, aes(x = Year, y = Capex, group = State, colour = State)) + 
  geom_line() +
  scale_colour_discrete(guide = 'none') +
  scale_x_discrete(expand=c(0, 1)) +
  geom_dl(aes(label = State), method = list(dl.trans(x = x + 0.2), "last.points", cex = 0.8)) +
  geom_dl(aes(label = State), method = list(dl.trans(x = x - 0.2), "first.points", cex = 0.8))