histogram in r on log-log scale displays only a limited amount of values

I want to generate histograms on a log-log scale. I am using R 2.15.2. Following the post Histogram with Logarithmic Scale my minimal code example looks like:

a <- rlnorm(1000)
hist.a <- hist(a, plot = FALSE)
plot(hist.a$count, log = "xy")

In my case the resulting histogram has its highest value at about 15. However, max(a) shows the highest value is above that.

The question is: How can I make it display all the values of a?

Solution

When you use in function plot() only object hist.a$count on the x axis you get just number corresponding to length of your object - they are not actual numbers of a values. You can add actual values later with axis() and taking labels= from hist.a$mids.

set.seed(5555)
a <- rlnorm(1000)
hist.a <- hist(a, plot = FALSE)

hist.a
  $breaks
  [1]  0  5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

  $counts
  [1] 955  34   6   2   2   0   0   1

  $density
  [1] 0.1910 0.0068 0.0012 0.0004 0.0004 0.0000 0.0000 0.0002

  $mids
  [1]  2.5  7.5 12.5 17.5 22.5 27.5 32.5 37.5

  $xname
  [1] "a"

  $equidist
  [1] TRUE

  attr(,"class")
  [1] "histogram"

plot(hist.a$count, log = "xy",xaxt="n",type="h",lwd=10,lend=2)
axis(1,at=1:length(hist.a$mids),labels=hist.a$mids)