Wondering how to output a chart I saw in the economist magazine

Question

I saw this in a recent economist and I was wondering if anyone has code that would help replicate it using ggplot. Economist Chart

Thanks!

Answer 1

I played around a little using only base plot functionality. This is the result:

Here is the code that produced it:

bigmacprice <- data.frame(
    country = c("Switzerland", "Brazil", "Euro area",
        "Canada", "Japan", "United States",
        "Britain", "Singapore", "South Korea",
        "South Africa", "Mexico", "Thailand",
        "Russia", "Malaysia", "China"),
    price = c(6.78, 5.26, 4.79, 4.18, 3.91, 3.71,
              3.63, 3.46, 3.03, 2.79, 2.58, 2.44,
              2.39, 2.25, 2.18)
)


plotbigmac <- function(mac, base = "United States", xlim = c(-40, 100)) {
    mac <- mac[order(mac$price),]
    base = which(mac$country == base)
    height <- (mac$price / mac[base, "price"] - 1) * 100
    par(bg = "#d0e0e7", col.main = "#262324", col.axis = "#393E46",
        mar = c(8, 8, 6, 6), las = 1)
    barplot(height, width = .1, space = .4,
        names.arg = mac$country, #cex.names = .8,
        col = "#01516c", border = "#7199a8", # border = "#577784",
        horiz = TRUE, xlim = c(-40, 100), axes = FALSE)
    axis(3, lty = 0)
    title(main = "Bunfight\nBig Mac index", col = "#393E46")

    abline(v = seq(-100, 100, 10), col = "white", lwd = 2)
    abline(v = 0, col = "#c8454e", lwd = 2)
    par(xpd = TRUE)
    for (i in 1:nrow(mac)) {
        rect(105, (i - 1) / 7, 118, i / 7 - 0.05,
        col = "white", border = "#7199a8")
        text(112, (i - 1) / 7 + 0.05, mac$price[i], cex = 0.8, col = "#393E46")
    }
    rect(-120, 2.5, -90, 3, col = "#c8454e", border = "#c8454e")
    text(-68, -.2, "Sources:", col = "#393E46")
    text(-64, -.3, "McDonald's;", col = "#393E46")
    text(-60, -.4, "The Economist", col = "#393E46")
}

plotbigmac(bigmacprice)

It might not be the exact match (ex. i don't know how to right align without calling text directly), and if you try to resize it the text will jump around, so you would have to tweak the parameters further to fit your needs. But it goes to show that you can get far with using only basic plot functionality in R.

EDIT: As was commented, the white stripes cross the bars. This is inevitable and cant be adjusted with another call to barplot since that would redraw the plot area. Thus we have to take a peek into the source-code of barplot and customize it for this purpose (love how easy this is in R). But now we have moved outside of the comfy basics in R (i.e. using built in barplot). Here is another go at it:

plotBigMac <- function(mac, base = "United States") {
    old.par <- par(no.readonly = TRUE)
    on.exit(par(old.par))
    # Create data:
    mac <- mac[order(mac$price),]
    base = which(mac$country == base)
    height <- (mac$price / mac[base, "price"] - 1) * 100
    # Costume 'barplot'
    NN <- length(height)
    width <- rep(1, length.out = NN)
    delta <- width / 2
    w.r <- cumsum(width + 0.5)
    w.m <- w.r - delta
    w.l <- w.m - delta
    xlim <- c(range(-.01 * height, height)[1], 100)
    ylim <- c(min(w.l), max(w.r))
    par(bg = "#d0e0e7", col.main = "#262324", col.axis = "#393E46",
        mar = c(8, 8, 6, 6), las = 1, cex = 0.9)
    plot.new()
    plot.window(xlim, ylim)
    abline(v = seq(-100, 100, 20), col = "white", lwd = 2)
    rect(0, w.l, height, w.r, col = "#01516c", border = "#7199a8", lwd = 1)

    # Lines and axis
    abline(v = 0, col = "#c8454e", lwd = 2)
    axis(3, axTicks(3), abs(axTicks(3)), lty = 0)
    axis(2, labels = mac$country, at = w.m, lty = 0)

    # Move outside of plot area
    par(xpd = TRUE)

    # Text misc.
    text(5, (w.l[base] + w.r[base]) / 2, "nil", font = 3)
    text(8, w.r[NN] + 2.3, "+")
    text(-8, w.r[NN] + 2.3, "-")

    # Create price boxes:
    rect(105, w.l, 125, w.r,
        col = "white", border = "#7199a8", lwd = 1)
    text(115, (w.r + w.l)/2, mac$price, cex = 0.8, col = "#393E46")

}

Which creates this:

Answer 2

The latticeExtra package has a theme styled after The Economist magazine which should help as a start.

However, that uses lattice whereas all the kids these days clamor for ggplot2 ...