Generate a Histogram for a date variable.

Generate a histogram for a date variable. This graph is intended to quickly provide the researcher with a quick, yet thorough representation of the date. The additional annotations may not be desired for publication-quality plots.

Usage

histogram_date(
  d_observed,
  variable_name,
  bin_unit = c("day", "week", "month", "quarter", "year"),
  main_title = base::gsub("_", " ", variable_name, perl = TRUE),
  sub_title = NULL,
  caption = paste0("each bin is 1 ", bin_unit, " wide"),
  x_title = variable_name,
  y_title = "Frequency",
  x_axis_format = scales::comma_format(),
  font_base_size = 12
)

Arguments

d_observed

The data.frame with the variable to graph.

variable_name

The name of the variable to graph. character.

bin_unit

The width of the histogram bins. Value is passed to base::seq.Date(). Defaults to 'day'. numeric.

main_title

The desired title on top of the graph. Defaults to variable_name, with underscores replaced with spaces. If no title is desired, pass a value of NULL. character.

sub_title

The desired subtitle near the top of the graph. Defaults to NULL If no subtitle is desired, pass a value of NULL. character.

caption

The desired text in the bottom-right, below the axis. Defaults to the bin_width. If no caption is desired, pass a value of NULL. character.

x_title

The desired title on the x-axis. Defaults to the variable_name. If no axis title is desired, pass a value of NULL. character.

y_title

The desired title on the y-axis. Defaults to “Frequency”. If no axis title is desired, pass a value of NULL. character.

x_axis_format

How the x-axis digits are formatted. Defaults to scales::comma_format(). scale format.

font_base_size

Sets font size through ggplot2's theme.

Value

Returns a histogram as a ggplot2 object.

Examples

# Don't run graphs on a headless machine without any the basic graphics packages installed.
if( require(grDevices) & require(nycflights13) ) {
  ds               <- nycflights13::flights
  ds$date_depart   <- as.Date(ISOdate(ds$year, ds$month, ds$day))
  ds$date_blank    <- as.Date(NA)

  histogram_date(ds, variable_name="date_depart", bin_unit="day")
  histogram_date(ds, variable_name="date_depart", bin_unit="week")
  histogram_date(ds, variable_name="date_depart", bin_unit="month")
  histogram_date(ds, variable_name="date_depart", bin_unit="quarter")
  histogram_date(ds, variable_name="date_depart", bin_unit="year")

  histogram_date(ds, variable_name="date_depart", bin_unit="day")
}
#> Loading required package: nycflights13