Label the x axis correct in a histogram in R

Question

I tried to name the x axis correct.

hist(InsectSprays$count, col='pink', xlab='Sprays', labels=levels(InsectSprays$spray), xaxt='n')
axis(1, at=unique(InsectSprays$spray), labels=levels(InsectSprays$spray))

But this produces

I want the letters below the bars and not on top.

Answer 1

You have to plot the labels at the histogram bin midpoints. If you want to remove the axis and just have lettering, the padj will move the letters closer to the axis which you just removed.

h <- hist(InsectSprays$count, plot = FALSE)

plot(h, xaxt = "n", xlab = "Insect Sprays", ylab = "Counts",
     main = "", col = "pink")
axis(1, h$mids, labels = LETTERS[1:6], tick = FALSE, padj= -1.5)

Answer 2

I generally think barplot are more suited for categorical variables. A solution in base R could be, with some rearrangement of the data:

d <- aggregate(InsectSprays$count, by=list(spray=InsectSprays$spray), FUN=sum)
d <- d[order(d$x, decreasing = T),]
t <- d$x
names(t) <- d$spray

barplot(t, las = 1, space = 0, col = "pink", xlab = "Sprays", ylab = "Count")

The output is the following:

Since you mentioned a ggplot solution would be nice:

library(ggplot)
library(dplyr)

InsectSprays %>% 
    group_by(spray) %>% 
    summarise(count = sum(count)) %>% 
    ggplot(aes(reorder(spray, -count),count)) + 
    geom_bar(stat = "identity", fill = "pink2") +
    xlab("Sprays")

The output being: