Contest: Prizes for Best R User Groups Plotting Code

by Joseph Rickert

For the past year or so we have been plotting the location of R user groups around the world using code (Download RUGS) adapted from a solution that Sandy Muspratt originally posted on Stack Overflow. In last week’s post, we made a modest improvement to our presentation by including a map of Europe. However, R users are doing so many interesting things with maps these days we thought that it was time to really up our game and maybe even go “New York Times” with the user group maps. We would like your help, so we are proposing a small contest:

Revolution Analytics will award a USD$100 Amazon gift certificate, some R Swag and eternal fame (well, we will feature the winning solution in a blog post.) to the contest winner.

Here are the objectives of the contest, the requirements for the plotting code, and the rules governing the contest.

Contest Objective
To produce R code that will plot the locations of R user groups on single map or series of maps in such a way that they can be used in the Revolutions Blog.

Plot Code Requirements

1. Entries must use this data file:  Download RUGS_ww_June_11_14
2. It must be possible to generate all plots from an R script.
3. It must be possible to plot user groups on a world map and also on maps of Europe and the United States.
4. It must be possible to display the plots in a browser.

Nice to have, but not an absolute requirement for an entry:
By clicking, or hovering over point on a map, the code should display the name of the R user group or the name of the city where the group is located

Contest Rules

1. Entries must be submitted via How-To on inside-r.org (Use the Tag: Plot Contest)
2. Entries must be submitted by midnight PST on July 31, 2014
3. Entries must be submitted under a GPL-compatible free software license.
4. Both individuals and teams are welcome to compete.
5. The contest is not open to Revolution Analytics employees

David Smith and I will judge the entries and decide the winner.

Note that although it must be possible to call the plotting functions from R, there are no restrictions on how the plots are rendered other than that we need to be able to use them in our blog. R code that creates Javascript, D3, Plotly etc. would be just fine.

Here are some resources that may be helpful.

• CRAN Task View: Graphic Displays & Dynamic Graphics & Graphic Devices & Visualization
• CRAN Task View: Analysis of Spatial Data
• Spatial maps and geocoding in R
• Easy Data Maps with R, the choroplethr package
• The ggmap package
• D3
• Basics of Javascript and D3 for R Users
• R Interactive Graphics with SVG
• Google Maps and Java Script API

Do it for the monkey!

@RevolutionR strikes again! The monkey as landed. Thank you @RevoJoe from @vdimarco pic.twitter.com/KyfouhIW8I

— Montreal R Users (@RusersMtl) March 11, 2014