Table of Contents
In order to add a vertical line to a histogram in R, you will need to use the ‘abline’ function and specify the location you would like the line to be placed. The ‘abline’ function takes two arguments, ‘v’ to draw a vertical line and ‘h’ to draw a horizontal line, and then you can specify the coordinates of the line. This can be done by entering the ‘x’ and ‘y’ coordinates of the line. After the line is specified, you can add additional parameters such as color, line type, and thickness.
You can use the following methods to add a vertical line to a histogram in R:
Method 1: Add Solid Vertical Line at Specific Location
abline(v=2)
This syntax adds one vertical line to the histogram at x=2.
Method 2: Add Customized Vertical Line at Specific Location
abline(v=mean(data), col='red', lwd=3, lty='dashed')
This syntax adds one vertical red dashed line with a width of 3 at the mean value of the histogram.
Method 3: Add Multiple Customized Vertical Lines
abline(v=quantile(data, .25), col='red', lwd=3) abline(v=quantile(data, .75), col='blue', lwd=3)
This syntax adds a red vertical line at the first quartile and a blue vertical line at the third quartile of the histogram.
The following examples show how to use each method in practice.
Example 1: Add Solid Vertical Line at Specific Location
The following code shows how to create a histogram and add a vertical line at x=2:
#make this example reproducible set.seed(1) #create data data <- rnorm(n=1000, mean=5, sd=2) #create histogram to visualize distribution of data hist(data) #add vertical line at x=2 abline(v=2)
Example 2: Add Customized Vertical Line at Specific Location
The following code shows how to create a histogram and add one vertical red dashed line with a width of 3 at the mean value of the histogram:
#make this example reproducible set.seed(1) #create data data <- rnorm(n=1000, mean=5, sd=2) #create histogram to visualize distribution of data hist(data) #add vertical line at mean value abline(v=mean(data), col='red', lwd=3, lty='dashed')
Example 3: Add Multiple Customized Vertical Lines
The following code shows how to create a histogram and add a red vertical line at the first quartile and a blue vertical line at the third quartile of the histogram.
#make this example reproducible set.seed(1) #create data data <- rnorm(n=1000, mean=5, sd=2) #create histogram to visualize distribution of data hist(data) #add vertical lines at 1st and third quartiles abline(v=quantile(data, .25), col='red', lwd=3) abline(v=quantile(data, .75), col='blue', lwd=3)
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in R: