World map of visited countries in R

Like me, if you like traveling as much as R you might want to draw a world map of the countries you have visited in R. Below an example with the countries I have visited as of January 2020: To draw this map in R, you will need the following packages: library(highcharter) library(dplyr) library(maps) As usual, you need the packages to be installed on your machine before loading them with library(). You can install a package with the command install.packages("name_of_package"). After having loaded the packages, we are going to use the dataset called iso3166 from the {maps} package and rename it dat. Here are the first 6 rows of the dataset: dat <- iso3166 head(dat) ## a2 a3 ISOname mapname sovereignty ## 1 AW ABW Aruba Aruba Netherlands ## 2 AF AFG Afghanistan Afghanistan Afghanistan ## 3 AO AGO Angola Angola Angola ## 4 AI AIA Anguilla Anguilla Anguilla ## 5 AX ALA Aland Islands Finland:Aland Islands Finland ## 6 AL ALB Albania Albania Albania We rename the variable a3 by iso-a3: dat <- rename(dat, "iso-a3" a3) head(dat) ## a2 iso-a3 ISOname mapname sovereignty ## 1 AW ABW Aruba Aruba Netherlands ## 2 AF AFG Afghanistan Afghanistan Afghanistan ## 3 AO AGO Angola Angola Angola ## 4 AI AIA Anguilla Anguilla Anguilla ## 5 AX ALA Aland Islands Finland:Aland Islands Finland ## 6 AL ALB Albania Albania Albania We save the visited countries in a vector called countries_visited. To know the ISO codes of the countries you have visited, check the column ISOname in the dataset and extract the ISO codes from the column iso-a3: countries_visited <- c("AUS", "BEL", "CAN", "CZE", "DNK", "FIN", "FRA", "DEU", "GRC", "HUN", "IRL", "ITA", "LVA", "LUX", "MCO", "MMR", "NLD", "NZL", "NOR", "PRT", "ROU", "SGP", "ESP", "SWE", "CHE", "TWN", "THA", "GBR", "USA") We now create a new variable called visited which equals to 1 if you have visited the country and 0 otherwise: dat$visited <- ifelse(dat$`iso-a3` %in% countries_visited, 1, 0) head(dat) ## a2 iso-a3 ISOname mapname sovereignty visited ## 1 AW ABW Aruba Aruba Netherlands 0 ## 2 AF AFG Afghanistan Afghanistan Afghanistan 0 ## 3 AO AGO Angola Angola Angola 0 ## 4 AI AIA Anguilla Anguilla Anguilla 0 ## 5 AX ALA Aland Islands Finland:Aland Islands Finland 0 ## 6 AL ALB Albania Albania Albania 0 Finally, we are ready to draw the world map thanks to the hcmap() command from the {highcharter} package: hcmap( map "custom/world-highres3", # high resolution world map data dat, # name of dataset joinBy "iso-a3", value "visited", showInLegend FALSE, # hide legend nullColor "#DADADA", download_map_data TRUE ) %>% hc_mapNavigation(enabled FALSE) %>% hc_legend("none") %>% hc_title(text "World map") # title Change the arguments to your needs and you are good to go. To go even further, you can also add a list including all your visited countries thanks to this code: dat <- subset(dat, dat$visited 1) sort(dat$ISOname) # sort is to have the visited countries in alphabetical order ## "Australia" ## "Belgium" ## "Canada" ## "Clipperton Island" ## "Czech Republic" ## "Denmark" ## "Finland" ## "France" ## "Germany" ## "Greece" ## "Hungary" ## "Ireland" ## "Italy" ## "Latvia" ## "Luxembourg" ## "Monaco" ## "Myanmar" ## "Netherlands" ## "New Zealand" ## "Norway" ## "Portugal" ## "Portugal" ## "Portugal" ## "Romania" ## "Singapore" ## "Spain" ## "Spain" ## "Sweden" ## "Switzerland" ## "Taiwan" ## "Thailand" ## "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" ## "United States" And count the number of countries visited: paste( "Total: ", sum(dat$visited), " countries." ) ## "Total: 33 countries." In conclusion, here is the entire code to draw a world map with visited countries highlighted, a list of all countries in alphabetical order and the number of countries visited: library(highcharter) library(dplyr) library(maps) dat <- iso3166 dat <- rename(dat, "iso-a3" a3) countries_visited <- c("AUS", "BEL", "CAN", "CZE", "DNK", "FIN", "FRA", "DEU", "GRC", "HUN", "IRL", "ITA", "LVA", "LUX", "MCO", "MMR", "NLD", "NZL", "NOR", "PRT", "ROU", "SGP", "ESP", "SWE", "CHE", "TWN", "THA", "GBR", "USA") dat$visited % hc_mapNavigation(enabled FALSE) %>% hc_legend("none") %>% hc_title(text "World map") # title dat <- subset(dat, dat$visited 1) sort(dat$ISOname) # sort is to have the visited countries in alphabetical order paste( "Total: ", sum(dat$visited), " countries." ) Thanks for reading. I hope this article helped you to draw a world map with visited countries highlighted in R. See other articles related to R here. As always, if you find a mistake/bug or if you have any questions do not hesitate to let me know in the comment section below, raise an issue on GitHub or contact me. Get updates every time a new article is published by subscribing to this blog.