geom_hline : Add horizontal lines

A simplified format of the function geom_hline() is :

geom_hline(yintercept, linetype, color, size)

It draws a horizontal line on the current plot at the specified ‘y’ coordinates :

library(ggplot2)
# Simple scatter plot
sp <- ggplot(data=mtcars, aes(x=wt, y=mpg)) + geom_point()
# Add horizontal line at y = 2O
sp + geom_hline(yintercept=20)
# Change line type and color
sp + geom_hline(yintercept=20, linetype="dashed", color = "red")
# Change line size
sp + geom_hline(yintercept=20, linetype="dashed", 
                color = "red", size=2)

Read more on line types here : Line types in R

geom_vline : Add vertical lines

A simplified format of the function geom_vline() is :

geom_vline(xintercept, linetype, color, size)

It draws a vertical line on the current plot at the specified ‘x’ coordinates :

library(ggplot2)
# Add a vertical line at x = 3
sp + geom_vline(xintercept = 3)
# Change line type, color and size
sp + geom_vline(xintercept = 3, linetype="dotted", 
                color = "blue", size=1.5)

geom_abline : Add regression lines

A simplified format of the function geom_abline() is :

geom_abline(intercept, slope, linetype, color, size)

The function lm() is used to fit linear models.

# Fit regression line
require(stats)
reg<-lm(mpg ~ wt, data = mtcars)
reg

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = mpg ~ wt, data = mtcars)
## 
## Coefficients:
## (Intercept)           wt  
##      37.285       -5.344

coeff=coefficients(reg)
# Equation of the line : 
eq = paste0("y = ", round(coeff[2],1), "*x + ", round(coeff[1],1))
# Plot
sp + geom_abline(intercept = 37, slope = -5)+
  ggtitle(eq)
# Change line type, color and size
sp + geom_abline(intercept = 37, slope = -5, color="red", 
                 linetype="dashed", size=1.5)+
  ggtitle(eq)

Note that, the function stat_smooth() can be used for fitting smooth models to data.

sp + stat_smooth(method="lm", se=FALSE)

geom_segment : Add a line segment

A simplified format of the function geom_segment() is :

geom_segment(aes(x, y, xend, yend))

It’s possible to use it as follow :

# Add a vertical line segment
sp + geom_segment(aes(x = 4, y = 15, xend = 4, yend = 27))
# Add horizontal line segment
sp + geom_segment(aes(x = 2, y = 15, xend = 3, yend = 15))

Note that, you can add an arrow at the end of the segment. grid package is required

library(grid)
sp + geom_segment(aes(x = 5, y = 30, xend = 3.5, yend = 25),
                  arrow = arrow(length = unit(0.5, "cm")))

Infos

This analysis has been performed using R software (ver. 3.1.2) and ggplot2 (ver. )