# Draw a specific line into TikZ diagram when the x axis has an ordinary scale

I created a pillar chart with TikZ. It has a percentage on the y-axis and an ordinary scale on the x-axis.

I now calculated the average value by associating each ordinary value with an absolute value. How can I draw this average (as a vertical line) into the chart.

In the image, the average for the "original implementation" would be 1.875 which means I would like to draw a line between "low" and "low-medium".

Hear is my code:

\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[
ybar,
ylabel=in \%,
bar width=20pt,
symbolic x coords={low, low-medium, medium-high, high, very-high},
xtick={low, low-medium, medium-high, high, very-high},
x tick label style={rotate=45, anchor=east, align=center},
height=8cm,
width=15cm,
title={Coupling amount per class classified with low, low-medium, medium-high, high, very-high},
nodes near coords,
nodes near coords align={vertical}, ]
\addplot[draw = brown, fill = brown] coordinates{(low,87.5) (low-medium,12.5) (medium-high,0) (high,0) (very-high,0)};
\addplot[draw = orange, fill = orange] coordinates{(low,100) (low-medium,0) (medium-high,0) (high,0) (very-high,0)};

\legend{original implementation, FP implementation}
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}

• Welcome to TeX.SX! Please, next time, use a complete MWE --- so that we have a compilable snippet with all the packages etc. needed to run (see the example in my answer). Jul 29 at 11:06

I am not sure I understand: if the x coordinates are symbolic, saying that x=1.875 makes no sense: in symbolic coordinates, only the discrete values have a sense.

So you have two possibilities:

The first one is to use the rel axis cs: coordinate system inside the graphic. This is a coordinate system that starts from (0,0) at the bottom left and goes to (1,1) at the top right. You have to guess a bit the position, though... I added

\draw[thick, brown, dashed] (rel axis cs:{(1.875-0.5)/5},0) --
(rel axis cs:{(1.875-0.5)/5},1);


The other one, if the values are really for example 1 for low, 2 for low-medium etc., you explicitly use a graph with the numerical x and then draw the line where you need with a draw:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{pgfplots}\pgfplotsset{compat=1.18}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[
ybar,
ylabel=in \%,
bar width=20pt,
xmin=0.5, xmax=5.5,
xtick={1,...,5},
xticklabels ={low, low-medium, medium-high, high, very-high},
x tick label style={rotate=45, anchor=east, align=center},
height=8cm,
width=15cm,
title={Coupling amount per class classified with low, low-medium, medium-high, high, very-high},
nodes near coords,
nodes near coords align={vertical}, ]
\addplot[draw = brown, fill = brown] coordinates{(1,87.5) (2,12.5) (3,0) (4,0) (5,0)};
\addplot[draw = orange, fill = orange] coordinates{(1,100) (2,0) (3,0) (4,0) (5,0)};
\draw[thick, brown, dashed] (1.875,0) -- (1.875,100);
\legend{original implementation, FP implementation}
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


• Thanks for your solution. The second approach you provided is the one I now use. I was not aware of the possibility to use the ordinal values while still using numerical values since it was my first time with tikzpicture. Jul 30 at 7:15