Changing axis tick mark labels to arbitrary values

Sometimes when you are making a figure in R, the automatic axis tick marks won't look like you want.  Let's generate some sample data and a histogram and see its automatic labeling.

decimals<-c(0.12,0.15,0.22,0.37,0.25,0.4,0.5,0.2)

hist(decimals,
     breaks=seq(from=0.05, to=0.55, by=0.1),
     col="gray",
     main="",
     xlab="Proportion of things")




Now try it while suppressing the x-axis so we can add our own labels.
 
hist(decimals,
     breaks=seq(from=0.05, to=0.55, by=0.1),
     col="gray",
     main="",
     xlab="Percent of things",
     xaxt="n")  #suppress the x-axis.

axis(side=1, #from help: "1=below, 2=left, 3=above and 4=right."
     las=1,
     at=c(0.1,0.3,0.5), #desired intervals if you want to change that too
     labels=c("10%", "30%", "50%"))#re-add the x-axis with desired labels at whatever intervals (here every 0.2).
#You can make the labels any arbitrary value you wish,
# so you could label 1-12 as January-December too.

#If you want to automate labeling, use seq().

hist(decimals,
     breaks=seq(from=0.05, to=0.55, by=0.1),
     col="gray",
     main="",
     xlab="Percent of things",
     xaxt="n")  #suppress the x-axis.

axis(side=1,
     las=1,
     at=c(seq(from=0.1, to=0.5, by=0.1)),
#Use seq in both at and labels (the intervals must match)
#or you get an error: "'at' and 'labels' lengths differ"
     labels=c(100*seq(from=0.1, to=0.5, by=0.1))) 
#Multiply the sequence you created in "at" to get percentages.