micromapST - Linked Micromap Plots for U. S. and Other Geographic Areas

Provides the users with the ability to quickly create linked micromap plots for a collection of geographic areas. Linked micromap plots are visualizations of geo-referenced data that link statistical graphics to an organized series of small maps or graphic images. The Help description contains examples of how to use the 'micromapST' function. Contained in this package are border group datasets to support creating linked micromap plots for the 50 U.S. states and District of Columbia (51 areas), the U. S. 20 Seer Registries, the 105 counties in the state of Kansas, the 62 counties of New York, the 24 counties of Maryland, the 29 counties of Utah, the 32 administrative areas in China, the 218 administrative areas in the UK and Ireland (for testing only), the 25 districts in the city of Seoul South Korea, and the 52 counties on the Africa continent. A border group dataset contains the boundaries related to the data level areas, a second layer boundaries, a top or third layer boundary, a parameter list of run options, and a cross indexing table between area names, abbreviations, numeric identification and alias matching strings for the specific geographic area. By specifying a border group, the package create linked micromap plots for any geographic region. The user can create and provide their own border group dataset for any area beyond the areas contained within the package with the 'BuildBorderGroup' function. In April of 2022, it was announced that 'maptools', 'rgdal', and 'rgeos' R packages would be retired in middle to end of 2023 and removed from the CRAN libraries. The 'BuildBorderGroup' function was dependent on these packages. 'micromapST' functions were not impacted by the retired R packages. Upgrading of 'BuildBorderGroup' function was completed and released with version 3.0.0 on August 10, 2023 using the 'sf' R package. References: Carr and Pickle, Chapman and Hall/CRC, Visualizing Data Patterns with Micromaps, CRC Press, 2010. Pickle, Pearson, and Carr (2015), micromapST: Exploring and Communicating Geospatial Patterns in US State Data., Journal of Statistical Software, 63(3), 1-25., <https://www.jstatsoft.org/v63/i03/>. Copyrighted 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 by Carr, Pearson and Pickle.