Draw Histogram with Logarithmic Scale in R (3 Examples)

This article illustrates how to convert the x-axis of a graph to log scale in R.

The article is structured as follows:

It’s time to dive into the examples:

Creation of Example Data

Have a look at the following example data:

set.seed(120653)                              # Set random seed
x <- c(rnorm(1000, 6), rnorm(1000, 13, 4))    # Create example data
head(x)                                       # Head of example data
# [1] 6.717975 5.000511 5.836833 5.255884 5.894466 5.847968

The previous output of the RStudio console shows the structure of our example data – It’s a numeric vector containing randomly drawn numbers.

Example 1: Draw Histogram with Logarithmic Scale Using Base R

Example 1 shows how to create a Base R histogram with logarithmic scale.

Let’s first draw a histogram with regular values on the x-axis:

hist(x, breaks = 100)                         # Histogram without logarithmic axis

As shown in Figure 1, the previous R programming code created a histogram without logarithmic scale.

If we want to convert the x-axis values of our histogram to logarithmic scale, we can use the log function as shown below:

hist(log(x), breaks = 100)                    # Histogram with logarithmic axis

As shown in Figure 2, the previous syntax created a Base R histogram with logarithmic scale.

Example 2: Draw Histogram with Logarithmic Scale Using ggplot2 Package

In this example, I’ll explain how to draw a ggplot2 histogram with logarithmic scale.

If we want to use the functions of the ggplot2 package, we first need to install and load ggplot2:

install.packages("ggplot2")                   # Install & load ggplot2 package
library("ggplot2")

Next, we can draw a ggplot2 histogram without log scale:

ggplot(data.frame(x), aes(x)) +               # Histogram without logarithmic axis
  geom_histogram(bins = 100)

The output of the previous R code is shown in Figure 3 – A ggplot2 histogram with default x-axis values.

Let’s transform our x-axis to logarithmic scale:

ggplot(data.frame(log(x)), aes(log(x))) +     # Histogram with logarithmic axis
  geom_histogram(bins = 100)

As shown in Figure 4, the previous code created a ggplot2 histogram with logarithmic scale using the log and geom_histogram functions.

Example 3: Draw Histogram with Logarithmic Scale Using scale_x_log10 Function of ggplot2 Package

In case we want to draw a ggplot2 histogram with log10 scale, we can use the scale_x_log10 function instead of the log function.

ggplot(data.frame(x), aes(x)) +               # Histogram with log10 axis
  geom_histogram(bins = 100) +
  scale_x_log10()

The output of the previous R programming code is shown in Figure 5 – A ggplot2 plot with log10 x-axis scale.

Video & Further Resources

Do you need more explanations on the R programming codes of this tutorial? Then you might have a look at the following video of my YouTube channel. In the video, I’m explaining the R programming code of this article:

In addition, you might want to have a look at the other articles on my website.

• Transform ggplot2 Plot Axis to log10 Scale
• Natural, Binary & Common Logarithm Using log() Function
• R Graphics Gallery
• R Programming Examples

In this post you learned how to display the x-axis of a graphic in logarithmic scale in the R programming language. In case you have any further questions, let me know in the comments section below.