How To Create Intuitive Maps in R Using the Leaflet Library

Mapping with R

Mapping with R

Mapping in R is a useful tool for visualizing spatial data and gaining insights into patterns and relationships within the data. There are a number of packages available in R that can be used for mapping, including leaflet, ggplot2, and maps. Let’s see an example using leaflet.

Creating the Map

After you install the package, you can load it into your R environment using the following command:

library(leaflet)

Once you have the package loaded, you can start creating maps. The leaflet package makes it easy to create interactive maps with just a few lines of code.

For example, with a little bit of data management and wrangling, the following code creates a map of the United States:

usa %>% leaflet() %>% addProviderTiles("CartoDB") %>% addCircleMarkers(radius = ~0.01*count, color = ~mycolor(count), popup = ~paste0(city, "<br/>", count)) %>% addLegend(pal = mycolor, values = c(1:1000), opacity = 0.75, title = 'Covid Count', position = 'topleft') %>% setView(lng = -85.670006, lat = 42.963795, zoom = 4.499)

As you can see in the code, you can customize the appearance of the map by using various options within the leaflet function. For example, you can specify the zoom level, add a title or legend, and even add layers for different data sets.

Conclusion

For more advanced mapping, you can use the ggplot2 package, which allows you to create static maps with a wide range of customization options.

You can also use the maps package to create choropleth maps, which are maps that use color to indicate the distribution of a particular variable across a geographic area.

In summary, mapping in R is a powerful tool for visualizing and exploring spatial data. Whether you are using the leaflet package for interactive maps or the ggplot2 and maps packages for static maps, R provides a wide range of options for creating high-quality maps.

Watch the video I created below to learn how to apply coding to Business Intelligence.

Originally published at https://stambaughportfolio.blogspot.com on December 30, 2022.

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