The folks at Sharp Sight Labs show how to create high-quality map visuals in R:
Maps are great for practicing data visualization. First of all, there’s a lot of data available on places like Wikipedia that you can map.
Moreover, creating maps typically requires several essential skills in combination. Specifically, you commonly need to be able to retrieve the data (e.g., scrape it), mold it into shape, perform a join, and visualize it. Because creating maps requires several skills from data manipulation and data visualization, creating them will be great practice for you.
And if that’s not enough, a good map just looks great. They’re visually compelling.
With that in mind, I want to walk you through the logic of building one step by step.
Read on for a step by step process.