A variant on your answer, if you want the "background" colors to go all the way to the edge of the graph and not just to the extremes of the data:
ggplot(df) +
geom_rect(xmin = -Inf, xmax = 0, ymin = -Inf, ymax = 0, fill = "red") +
geom_rect(xmin = 0, xmax = Inf, ymin = -Inf, ymax = 0, fill = "blue") +
geom_rect(xmin = 0, xmax = Inf, ymin = 0, ymax = Inf, fill = "green") +
geom_rect(xmin = -Inf, xmax = 0, ymin = 0, ymax = Inf, fill = "yellow") +
geom_point(aes(x, y), size = 5)
EDIT: transparency
Adding alpha=0.5
was "working" except for the problem that by using geom_rect
, even without referencing the original df
data frame, drew a rectangle for each row of df
(10 times, in this case). Setting alpha=0.01
shows that there is transparency, but at a 10th the expected level. The approach should have been to annotate with rectangles; annotations draw only a single instance of the geom, not one per row of the original data frame:
ggplot(df) +
annotate("rect", xmin=-Inf, xmax=0, ymin=-Inf, ymax=0, fill="red", alpha=0.5) +
annotate("rect", xmin=0, xmax=Inf, ymin=-Inf, ymax=0, fill="blue", alpha=0.5) +
annotate("rect", xmin=0, xmax=Inf, ymin=0, ymax=Inf, fill="green", alpha=0.5) +
annotate("rect", xmin=-Inf, xmax=0, ymin=0, ymax=Inf, fill="yellow", alpha=0.5) +
geom_point(aes(x, y), size=5)