Tweak Spacing

This lesson is called Tweak Spacing, part of the Going Deeper with R course. This lesson is called Tweak Spacing, part of the Going Deeper with R course.

Transcript

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Your Turn

Solution

enrollment_by_race_ethnicity %>% 
  filter(race_ethnicity == "Hispanic/Latino") %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = year,
             y = percent_of_total_at_school,
             group = district)) +
  geom_line(color = "lightgray",
            alpha = 0.5) +
  geom_line(data = highlight_district,
            inherit.aes = TRUE,
            color = "blue") +
  geom_text(data = highlight_district,
            inherit.aes = TRUE,
            aes(label = percent_display),
            hjust = c(1, 0),
            family = "Courier New",
            color = "blue") +
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(axis.title = element_blank(),
          panel.grid.minor.y = element_blank(),
          plot.title = element_text(face = "bold) +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = percent_format()) +
  labs(title = "<span style = 'color: blue'>Douglas ESD</span> saw a large growth in its Latino student population from 2017-2018 to 2018-2019") +
  annotate("text",
           x = 2.02,
           y = .825,
           hjust = 0,
           color = "gray",
           family = "Courier New",
           label = "Woodburn has the highest\npercentage of Latino students\nof any district") +
  scale_x_discrete(expand = expansion(add = c(0.1, 0.5)))

Use the expand argument within the scale_x_discrete() function to remove any gaps in your plot.

Learn More

To read more about the expand() function, check out the ggplot documentation website. As you may have picked up in the video, I often end up just playing around with the values here in order to find something that gives me what I want.

There is also a great cheatsheet by Christian Burkhardt showing how expand() works.

Have any questions? Put them below and we will help you out!

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Abby Isaacson • May 18, 2021

I forgot to put in the "add" to the last line, but it seems to have worked fine? What's the add for? scale_x_discrete(expand = expansion(c(.1, .35)))
When I added a fig.width = 10 code in my Rmd setup code, only this plot in Rmd turned TINY. It returns to normal size when I remove the code, but then it's cut off when I knit. Without cutoff, I can only really read this graph when I knit it. I didn't see yours turn small when you set the width!?

Matt M • December 7, 2021

I noticed when using both add and mult, I have change the nudge_x and nudge_y values within the geom_text. I see in this code, you are no longer using either and instead have gone to hjust. When is it "better" to nudge_x rather than hjust?