R Markdown - Positioning table and plot side by side - r-markdown

Question

I am using R Markdown to output to pdf, and I am trying to get a table and a plot aligned side by side horizontally. I can get fig.align = "right" to align the plot to the right of the page, but it is plotted under the table (formatted with kable) and not side by side with it. Any tips?

Answer 1

Here is a way using the TeX package floatrow:
---
title: "Untitled"
header-includes:
- \usepackage{floatrow}
output:
pdf_document:
keep_tex: true
---
\newfloatcommand{btabbox}{table}
\begin{figure}[H]
\begin{floatrow}
\ffigbox{%
```{r, fig.align = "right", echo = F}
plot(mpg ~ hp, data = mtcars)
```
}{\caption{A figure}}
\btabbox{%
```{r, fig.align = "right", echo = F}
knitr::kable(head(mtcars[,1:3]), format = "latex")
```
}{\caption{A table}}
\end{floatrow}
\end{figure}

Answer 2

I prefer the method by Martin, but if you wanted to have a less LaTeX reliant solution, you could convert the table into a grid graphic and plot it as a subfigure:
---
header-includes:
- \usepackage{subfig}
output: pdf_document
---
```{r, fig.cap='two plots', fig.subcap= c('A figure', 'A table'), out.width = '.49\\linewidth', echo = F, fig.align='center'}
library(gridExtra)
library(grid)
plot(mpg ~ hp, data = mtcars)
grid.newpage()
grid.table(head(mtcars[,1:6]), theme = ttheme_minimal())
```

Answer 3

I was able to do this with a combination of the multicol package and minipages. Just another option...
Here's the code:
---
title: "Untitled"
header-includes:
- \usepackage{multicol}
- \newcommand{\btwocol}{\begin{multicols}{2}}
- \newcommand{\etwocol}{\end{multicols}}
output:
pdf_document:
keep_tex: true
---
```{r minipage_funs, echo = FALSE}
## adding minipages in Rmarkdown only seems to work for me when returned from function
fig_table_mp_start <- function() {
return("\\begin{minipage}{\\textwidth}")
}
fig_table_mp_end <- function() {
return("\\end{minipage}")
}
```
`r fig_table_mp_start()`
\btwocol
```{r, fig.align = "right", echo = FALSE}
plot(mpg ~ hp, data = mtcars)
```
```{r, fig.align = "right", echo = FALSE}
knitr::kable(head(mtcars[,1:3]), format = "latex")
```
\etwocol
`r fig_table_mp_end()`
I assume you can play around with padding to make it look pretty.