diff --git a/src/statistics.jl b/src/statistics.jl
index 9c0f4ff81..a8bd8ec2d 100644
--- a/src/statistics.jl
+++ b/src/statistics.jl
@@ -1749,8 +1749,9 @@ function apply_statistic(stat::JitterStatistic,
     rng = MersenneTwister(stat.seed)
     for var in stat.vars
         data = getfield(aes, var)
-        broadcast!(+, data, data, stat.range * (rand(rng, length(data)) - 0.5) .* span)
-        setfield!(aes, var, data)
+        outdata = Array(Float64, size(data))
+        broadcast!(+, outdata, data, stat.range * (rand(rng, length(data)) - 0.5) .* span)
+        setfield!(aes, var, outdata)
     end
 end
 
diff --git a/test/jitter.jl b/test/jitter.jl
index a76d5b0b6..e11e68bfc 100644
--- a/test/jitter.jl
+++ b/test/jitter.jl
@@ -4,4 +4,6 @@ using Gadfly, DataArrays, RDatasets
 plot(dataset("datasets", "iris"), x=:SepalLength, y=:SepalWidth, color=:Species,
      Stat.x_jitter, Stat.y_jitter, Geom.point)
 
-
+# make sure type-coercion works properly, the `y` values here are integers
+# but will be coerced into floats.
+plot(x=rand(500), y=rand(1:4, 500), Stat.y_jitter(range=0.5), Geom.point)