How to Plot and Animate Data on Maps Using the R Programming Language

Abstract

Plotting data on a map can be a powerful technique for visualizing geographical information. Animating that data -- that is, making it move -- can further enhance the understanding of the underlying data. This tutorial will teach you how to plot data on simple maps using ggplot2 (https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/) and animate it using gganimate (https://gganimate.com/articles/gganimate.html). You also will learn how to use dplyr (https://dplyr.tidyverse.org/) to partition data into subsets and compute summary statistics of these subsets to be plotted onto a map.