How do you create a 50 state map (instead of just lower-48)

Question

How do you make a 50 state map in R?

It seems like all the example maps people have created are just of the lower 48

Answer 1

There are lots of ways that you can do this. Personally, I find Google to have the most attractive maps. I recommend ggmap, googleVis, and/or RgoogleMaps.

For example:

require(googleVis)

G4 <- gvisGeoChart(CityPopularity, locationvar='City', colorvar='Popularity',
                   options=list(region='US', height=350, 
                                displayMode='markers',
                                colorAxis="{values:[200,400,600,800],
                                 colors:[\'red', \'pink\', \'orange',\'green']}")
) 
plot(G4)

Produces this:

Another approach that will give you a more attractive result than maps is to follow the approach of this tutorial which shows how to import custom maps from Inkscape (or, equivalently, Adobe Illustrator) into R for plotting.

You'll end up with something like this:

Here's a way to it with choroplethr and ggplot2:

library(choroplethr)
library(ggplot2)
library(devtools)
install_github('arilamstein/[email protected]')
library(choroplethrZip)

data(df_zip_demographics)
df_zip_demographics$value = df_zip_demographics$percent_asian

zip_map = ZipChoropleth$new(df_zip_demographics)
zip_map$ggplot_polygon = geom_polygon(aes(fill = value),
                                      color = NA)
zip_map$set_zoom_zip(state_zoom = NULL,
                     county_zoom = NULL,
                     msa_zoom = NULL,
                     zip_zoom = NULL)
zip_map$title = "50 State Map for StackOverflow"
zip_map$legend = "Asians"
zip_map$set_num_colors(4)
choro = zip_map$render()
choro

data(df_pop_state)
outline = StateChoropleth$new(df_pop_state)
outline = outline$render_state_outline(tolower(state.name))

choro_with_outline = choro + outline
choro_with_outline

which gives you:

Answer 2

Resurrecting an old thread because it still doesn't have an accepted answer.

Check out @hrbrmstr's albersusa package:

devtools::install_github("hrbrmstr/albersusa")
library(albersusa)
plot(usa_composite(proj="laea"))

which produces

and can do much more

us <- usa_composite()
us_map <- fortify(us, region="name")

gg <- ggplot()
gg <- gg + geom_map(data=us_map, map=us_map,
                    aes(x=long, y=lat, map_id=id),
                    color="#2b2b2b", size=0.1, fill=NA)
gg <- gg + theme_map()

gg + 
  geom_map(data=us@data, map=us_map,
           aes(fill=pop_2014, map_id=name),
           color="white", size=0.1) +
  coord_proj(us_laea_proj) +
  scale_fill_viridis(name="2014 Populaton Estimates", labels=comma) +
  theme(legend.position="right")

Answer 3

This R-bloggers link might be useful for you.

To give you a look, you can get started on a 50-state map with

library(maps)
map("world", c("USA", "hawaii"), xlim = c(-180, -65), ylim = c(19, 72))

Believe it or not, Hawaii is on there. It's just really small because of the margins.