Feature request: simple geom_boxplot

[ptoche]

I introduced a simple boxplot to students today and had to restrict myself to plain R boxplots, because the ggplot2 syntax I know is IMHO too roundabout.

The simplest boxplot appears to be something like this:

x = 1:15
df <- data.frame(x = x)
 ggplot(data = df, aes(x = factor(""), y = x)) +
 geom_boxplot() + 
 theme_minimal() + xlab(NULL)  #  simplify

By contrast, a decent boxplot in plain R can be obtained with:

boxplot(x)

Questions:

1. Is there a simple way to obtain a simple geom_boxplot()?
2. May I suggest adding a "minimal boxplot" feature, if it is not currently available?

Perhaps analogous to qplot something like qboxplot that would have the following syntax

qboxplot(x, data = df)

Or allowing to set aes(x=x) without having to set an x value, and automagically removing the unwanted theme elements, e.g.:

ggplot(data = df, aes(y = x)) + geom_boxplot(stat = "identityx")

(I know stat="identity" is already in use, so not sure if it can be recycled easily like that)

[foo-bar-baz-qux]

1. I think the example you have posted is about as simple as it currently allows. Setting x to a single factor is probably the simplest workaround:

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = '1', y = disp)) + geom_boxplot()

2. I've submitted a pull request to remove the requirement of an x aesthetic in geom_boxplot() that should help simplify the syntax for univariate box plots: Automatically fill in x for univariate boxplot #2110 and Added support for univariate box plots with no x aesthetic. #2292.

[ptoche]

Great pull request! I agree with the points you make. One workaround might be to invoke the following theme elements every time a univariate boxplot is created:

  theme(axis.ticks.x = element_blank(),
      panel.grid.major.x =  element_blank(),
      panel.grid.minor.x =  element_blank())