Filling in the area under a line graph in ggplot2: geom_area()

Question

For the data:

    def.percent period  valence
1   6.4827843   1984-1985   neg
2   5.8232425   1985-1986   neg
3   -2.4003260  1986-1987   pos
4   -3.5994399          


        

Answer 1

This happens because in your case period is a categorical i.e. a factor variable. If you convert it to numeric it works fine:

Data

df <- read.table(header=T, text='  def.percent period  valence
1   6.4827843   1984   neg
2   5.8232425   1985   neg
3   -2.4003260  1986   pos
4   -3.5994399  1987   pos')

Solution

ggplot(df, aes(x=period, y=def.percent)) +
  geom_area(aes(fill=valence)) +
  geom_line() + geom_point() + geom_hline(yintercept=0)

Plot