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R and Interactive Visualizations

3 messages · Lorenzo Isella, Greg Snow, Duncan Murdoch

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Dear All,
I use several R libraries (ggplot2, igraph etc...) for producing static  
visualizations.
However, I'd like to be able to go beyond this.
Things I may like to be able to achieve (relying on R as much as possible):

1) network visualizations such that when you click on a node, you see its  
properties and the network layout centers on that node
2) geographical plots (e.g. European countries colored according to their  
GDP and the possibility to see some other metadata when I click on one of  
them)
3) being able to select/deselect some dataset in a conventional plot (e.g.  
multiple stacked histograms)

and so on and so forth...

I did some online research and came across potentially many resources like


http://bit.ly/18dkX1P
http://bit.ly/18dkXPF
http://bit.ly/1jsksk4
http://bit.ly/1jskyrO

but I honestly have no idea about where to start from.
Making the interactive visualizations available on a website is a logical  
second step, but first things first.
I am sure that plenty of people on this list have a strong expertise about  
the interactive visualizations, so any suggestion is welcome.
Cheers

Lorenzo
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For task #1, if you have the coordinates where the nodes were plotted
then you can just pass this information along with the meta data to
the identify function (assuming base graphics).  If you want the
metadata to only appear for the current point (disappear when leave
that point) then look at the HWidentify and HTKidentify functions in
the TeachingDemos package.

For task #2, if you have a point within each country that the person
can click on (point at capitol city, intial letter of country name,
etc.) then you can just use identify again.  If you want to capture a
click anywhere within the polygon(s) then you can use the locator
function to capture the coordinates of the point clicked on, then use
tools within packages like sp (I think the over function is the
current best one) to identify which polygon/country the point is in,
then add the appropriate metadata at the point clicked.

For number 3, there is some functionality like this in the iplots
package, the ggobi tool, and the TkBrush function in the TeachingDemos
package.  If those do not do what you want, then give us some more
detail on what you would like to do.

On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 8:06 AM, Lorenzo Isella
<lorenzo.isella at gmail.com> wrote:

  
    
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On 22/11/2013 10:06 AM, Lorenzo Isella wrote:
Besides what has been mentioned so far, you should look at the gridSVG 
package.  There are a number of examples linked from its web page 
http://sjp.co.nz/projects/gridsvg/.

Duncan Murdoch