Introduction to Spatial Data

We have been mapping points, but there are several spatial features that can be mapped, including polygons. In R, polygons are often stored in a SpatialPolygonsDataFrame that holds the polygon, coordinate information, and a data frame with one row per polygon.

A SpatialPolygonsDataFrame called shp that contains the zip code boundaries for North Carolina has been loaded for you. shp has five slots that store various types of information:

data: data associated with each polygon
polygons: coordinates to plot polygons
plotOrder: order in which polygons are plotted
bbox: bounding box for geographic data (i.e., a rectangle)
proj4string: coordinate reference system

Let's take a closer look inside the shp object.

This exercise is part of the course

Interactive Maps with leaflet in R

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Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Print a summary of the `shp` data
___(shp)

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Interactive Maps with leaflet in R

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Chapter 1 will introduce students to the htmlwidgets package and the leaflet package. Following this introduction, students will build their first interactive web map using leaflet. Through the process of creating this first map students will be introduced to many of the core features of the leaflet package, including adding different map tiles, setting the center point and zoom level, plotting single points based on latitude and longitude coordinates, and storing leaflet maps as objects. Chapter 1 will conclude with students geocoding DataCamp’s headquarters, and creating a leaflet map that plots the headquarters and displays a popup describing the location.

Exercise 1: Introduction to leaflet Exercise 2: Loading the leaflet Library Exercise 3: Creating an Interactive Web Map Exercise 4: Map Tiles Exercise 5: Provider Tiles Exercise 6: Adding a Custom Map Tile Exercise 7: Setting the Default Map View Exercise 8: A Map with a View I Exercise 9: A Map with a Narrower View Exercise 10: Plotting DataCamp HQ Exercise 11: Mark it Exercise 12: Adding Popups and Storing your Map

In Chapter 4 students will learn to map polygons, which can be used to define geographic regions (e.g., zip codes, states, countries, etc.). Chapter 4 will start by plotting the zip codes in North Carolina that fall in the top quartile of mean family incomes. Students will learn to customize the polygons with color palettes and labels. Chapter 4 will conclude with adding a new layer to the map of every college in America that displays every zip code with a mean income of $200,000 or more during the 2015 tax year. Through the process of mapping zip codes students will learn about spatial data generally, geoJSON data, the @ symbol, and the addPolygons() function. Furthermore, students will have an opportunity to practice applying many of the options that they learned about in the previous chapters, such as popups and labels, as well as new ways to customize their maps, such as the highlight option in addPolygons().

Exercise 1: Spatial Data Exercise 2: Introduction to Spatial Data

Current Exercise

Exercise 3: Exploring Spatial Data Exercise 4: Joining Spatial Data Exercise 5: Mapping Polygons Exercise 6: addPolygons() Function Exercise 7: NC High Income Zips Exercise 8: addPolygon() Options Exercise 9: Let's do some Logging Exercise 10: Putting it All Together Exercise 11: Wealthiest Zip Codes in America Exercise 12: Final Map Exercise 13: Thank you!