Lines connecting jittered points - dodging by multiple groups

Question

I try to connect jittered points between measurements from two different methods (measure) on an x-axis. These measurements are linked to one another by the probands (a), that can be separated into two main groups, patients (pat) and controls (ctr), My df is like that:

set.seed(1)
df <- data.frame(a = rep(paste0("id", "_", 1:20), each = 2),
                 value = sample(1:10, 40, rep = TRUE),
                 measure = rep(c("a", "b"), 20), group = rep(c("pat", "ctr"), each = 2,10))

I tried

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(df,aes(measure, value, fill = group)) + 
  geom_point(position = position_jitterdodge(jitter.width = 0.1, jitter.height = 0.1,
                                             dodge.width = 0.75), shape = 1) +
  geom_line(aes(group = a), position = position_dodge(0.75))

^{Created on 2020-01-13 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)}

I used the fill aesthetic in order to separate the jittered dots from both groups (pat and ctr). I realised that when I put the group = a aesthetics into the ggplot main call, then it doesn't separate as nicely, but seems to link better to the points.

My question: Is there a way to better connect the lines to the (jittered) points, but keeping the separation of the two main groups, ctr and pat?

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

The big issue you are having is that you are dodging the points by only group but the lines are being dodged by a, as well.

To keep your lines with the axes as is, one option is to manually dodge your data. This takes advantage of factors being integers under the hood, moving one level of group to the right and the other to the left.

df = transform(df, dmeasure = ifelse(group == "ctr", 
                                     as.numeric(measure) - .25,
                                     as.numeric(measure) + .25 ) )

You can then make a plot with measure as the x axis but then use the "dodged" variable as the x axis variable in geom_point and geom_line.

ggplot(df, aes(x = measure, y = value) ) +
     geom_blank() +
     geom_point( aes(x = dmeasure), shape = 1 ) +
     geom_line( aes(group = a, x = dmeasure) )

If you also want jittering, that can also be added manually to both you x and y variables.

df = transform(df, dmeasure = ifelse(group == "ctr", 
                                     jitter(as.numeric(measure) - .25, .1),
                                     jitter(as.numeric(measure) + .25, .1) ),
               jvalue = jitter(value, amount = .1) )

ggplot(df, aes(x = measure, y = jvalue) ) +
     geom_blank() +
     geom_point( aes(x = dmeasure), shape = 1 ) +
     geom_line( aes(group = a, x = dmeasure) )