Barplotting survey results with axes switched

Question

My level of R expertise is 25% into "R for Everyone", which is insufficient for my first real-world task:

48 people were asked to memorize and recall 10 digits. Now the results should be presented in a bar plot with the number of responses on the X axis and the number of memorized digits - on Y.

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Here's what I did by now:

responses <- c(10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,2,2,2,2,2,2,6,6,6,6,8,8,8,8,4,4,4,7,7,9)
# 10 people recalled 10 digits, 11 people - 3 digits, 7 people 5 digits, etc

I tried plot(responses). The resulting graphic was entirely off my goal.

I tried qplot and barplot, but I don't know how to switch axes (not to make the graph horizontal, but to swap X and Y).

Then I thought that I should treat responses as a factor. But ggplot2 doesn't know how to deal with data of class factor. Also, I don't know how to formulate "show factor levels on the X axis and the depth of each level on Y".

Then I converted responses to a single-column data.frame, which, coupled with ggplot2, delivered almost palatable results:

df <- data.frame(responses)
ggplot(df, aes(df$responses)) + geom_bar(binwidth=.5,fill="#56B4E9") + xlab("Digits memorized") +    ylab("# of responses") + ggtitle("10 digit memorization experiment results") + scale_x_continuous( breaks = round( seq( min(df$responses), max(df$responses), by = 1 ), 1) ) + theme_economist() + scale_y_continuous(breaks = c(0:11)) + theme(axis.title=element_text(size=14))

Why this graph is not what I need:

• The number of responses should be on the X axis, while the number of digits memorized — on Y. (Then the distribution will be more obvious.)

In the code above, I would gladly replace ggplot(df, aes(df$responses)) with ggplot(df, aes(df$something_else)), but the responses column is all I have.

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I tried. What you see above is a shadow of what I have been trying for the last 3 days. Unfortunately, most of my trying boils down to following my own tracks into the same dead ends.

I searched. What I found were 2 categories of solutions: either for multiple columns/variables, which I don't understand how to apply to my one-column data.frame; or the ones assuming more knowledge.

I would be grateful for any hint.

Thank you for your patience.

Answer 1

You can either the base graphics function barplot()

barplot(table(responses), horiz=T, xlab="Count",ylab="Digits Mem")

or ggplot with coord_flip()

ggplot(data.frame(resp=factor(responses)), aes(resp)) + 
    geom_bar() + coord_flip() +
    ylab("Count") + xlab("Digits Mem")