hadley/ggplot2 — comment on commit 173094a923eb2ece8c57887755eca4e45df7b67d
File: R/geom-dotplot.r line 26
By briandk:

> Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to totally remove the axis labels and ticks from inside the geom code -- the user has to do that manually.

@wch - I'm not sure we need to remove them, but maybe I'm just misunderstanding what a histodot dotplot is supposed to do. Consider this code:

```r
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = mpg)) +
geom_dotplot(method="histodot", binwidth = 5.5)
```

which produces this graphic:

![Dotplot where multiple bins exceed a count of 1.0][1]

My expectation for a dotplot with "count" on the y-axis was that "count" would basically indicate (bin count) / (total count). That is, the numerical value for the height of a dot stack was precisely (or, at least rounded) the fraction of total dots that were binned in that stack.

The above graphic proves that my interpretation can't possibly be the case, since two stacks clearly exceed 1. Also, a look back at Wilkinson (1999) confirmed that the original graphics don't even really have a quantitative y-axis.

Is that why you're suggesting that we "blank" the axis text? Because it's not actually a count anyway?

[1]: http://briandk.com/screenshots/DotplotWithCountsExceedingUnity-20120226-215430.png