Book Image

R Data Visualization Recipes

By : Vitor Bianchi Lanzetta
Book Image

R Data Visualization Recipes

By: Vitor Bianchi Lanzetta

Overview of this book

R is an open source language for data analysis and graphics that allows users to load various packages for effective and better data interpretation. Its popularity has soared in recent years because of its powerful capabilities when it comes to turning different kinds of data into intuitive visualization solutions. This book is an update to our earlier R data visualization cookbook with 100 percent fresh content and covering all the cutting edge R data visualization tools. This book is packed with practical recipes, designed to provide you with all the guidance needed to get to grips with data visualization using R. It starts off with the basics of ggplot2, ggvis, and plotly visualization packages, along with an introduction to creating maps and customizing them, before progressively taking you through various ggplot2 extensions, such as ggforce, ggrepel, and gganimate. Using real-world datasets, you will analyze and visualize your data as histograms, bar graphs, and scatterplots, and customize your plots with various themes and coloring options. The book also covers advanced visualization aspects such as creating interactive dashboards using Shiny By the end of the book, you will be equipped with key techniques to create impressive data visualizations with professional efficiency and precision.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Crafting choropleth maps using ggplot2


Choropleths are thematic maps, usually colored according to a third continuous variable. This recipe demonstrates how to brew these using ggplot2. This recipe crafts a choropleth displaying the 1985 USA states' gross product (GSP). The way I see it--there are at least four important things to check out from this recipe:

  • How to use ggplot2 to get map data
  • How to merge map data (coordinates and stuff) and other data in order to plot
  • How to use polygons and colors to draw the map and make a choropleth
  • How to manipulate the guide color bar

To the job!

Getting ready

Besides ggplot2, we need some data coming from Ecdat, and dplyr is used to manipulate data. Make sure to have both by running the following:

> if( !require(Ecdat)){ install.packages('Ecdat')}
> if( !require(dplyr)){ install.packages('dplyr')}

Let's roll.

How to do it...

Let us start with the choropleth:

  1. ggplot2 has a function called map_data(), which is just what we need to a create data frame with...