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Developing Geographic Thematic Maps with R

Asked 2009-08-11T15:06:53.063
59

There are clearly a number of packages in R for all sorts of spatial analysis. That can by seen in the CRAN Task View: Analysis of Spatial Data. These packages are numerous and diverse, but all I want to do is some simple thematic maps. I have data with county and state FIPS codes and I have ESRI shape files of county and state boundaries and the accompanying FIPS codes which allows joining with the data. The shape files could be easily converted to other formats, if needed.

So what's the most straight forward way to create thematic maps with R?

This map looks like it was created with an ESRI Arc product, but this is the type of thing I would like to do with R:

alt text http://www.infousagov.com/images/choro.jpg Map copied from here.

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Thought I would add some new information here since there has been some activity around this topic since the posting. Here are two great links to "Choropleth Map R Challenge" on the Revolutions blog:

Choropleth Map R Challenge

Choropleth Challenge Results

Hopefully these are useful for people viewing this question.

All the best,

Jay

answered 2010-02-10T16:21:55.380

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