US State Visibility Based Map

A SpatialPolygonsDataFrame object to plot a Visibility Based Map.

state.vbm

Format

An object of class SpatialPolygonsDataFrame with 50 rows and 2 columns.

Source

The data was converted from the maps library for S-PLUS. S-PLUS uses the map with permission from the author. This version of the data has not received permission from the author (no attempt made, not that it was refused), most of my uses I feel fall under fair use and do not violate copyright, but you will need to decide for yourself and your applications.

Details

A SpatialPolygonsDataFrame object to plot a map of the US states where the sizes of the states have been adjusted to be more equal. This map can be useful for plotting state data using colors patterns without the larger states dominating and the smallest states being lost. The original map is copyrighted by Mark Monmonier. Official publications based on this map should acknowledge him. Comercial publications of maps based on this probably need permission from him to use.

References

http://www.markmonmonier.com/index.htm, http://euclid.psych.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/bright-ideas.html

Author

Greg Snow greg.snow@imail.org (of this compilation)

Examples

if (requireNamespace("sp", quietly = TRUE)) {
  library(sp)
  data(state.vbm)
  plot(state.vbm)

  tmp <- state.x77[, 'HS Grad']
  tmp2 <- cut(tmp, seq(min(tmp), max(tmp), length.out=11),
            include.lowest=TRUE)
  plot(state.vbm, col=cm.colors(10)[tmp2])
}