gvisMotionChart: Google Motion Chart with R

In jburos/GoogleVis: Interface between R and the Google Chart Tools

Description

The gvisMotionChart function reads a data.frame and creates text output referring to the Google Visualisation API, which can be included into a web page, or as a stand-alone page. The actual chart is rendered by the web browser in flash.

A motion chart is a dynamic chart to explore several indicators over time.

Usage

gvisMotionChart(data, idvar = "id", timevar = "time",
                      xvar="", yvar="", colorvar="", sizevar="",
		      date.format = "%Y/%m/%d", 
		      options = list(), chartid)

Arguments

data	a data.frame. The data has to have at least four columns with subject name (idvar), time (timevar) and two columns of numeric values. Further columns, numeric and character/factor are optional. The combination of idvar and timevar has to describe a unique row. The column names of the idvar and timevar have to be specified. Further columns, if not specified by the other arguments (xvar, yvar, colorvar, sizevar), will be assumed to be in the order of the arguments.
idvar	column name of data with the subject to be analysed.
timevar	column name of data which shows the time dimension. The information has to be either numeric, of class Date or a character which follows the pattern 'YYYYWww' (e.g. '2010W04' for weekly data) or 'YYYYQq' (e.g. '2010Q1' for quarterly data).
xvar	column name of a numerical vector in data to be plotted on the x-axis.
yvar	column name of a numerical vector in data to be plotted on the y-axis.
colorvar	column name of data that identifies bubbles in the same series. Use the same value to identify all bubbles that belong to the same series; bubbles in the same series will be assigned the same color. Series can be configured using the series option.
sizevar	values in this column are mapped to actual pixel values using the sizeAxis option.
date.format	if timevar is of class Date then this argument specifies how the dates are reformatted to be used by JavaScript.
options	list of configuration options for Google Motion Chart. gvis.editor a character label for an on-page button which opens an in-page dialog box that enables users to edit, change and customise the chart. By default no value is given and therefore no button is displayed. gvis.language values may be 'ca', 'da', 'de', 'en', 'en_GB', 'en_IE', 'es', 'es_419', 'fi', 'fr', 'id', 'in', 'is', 'it', 'nl', 'no', 'pt', 'pt_BR', 'pt_PT', 'sv'. If not set the API detects the language settings of the browser. Further possible components are, taken from https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/motionchart: height height of the chart in pixels. width width of the chart in pixels. state An initial display state for the chart. This is a serialised JSON object that describes zoom level, selected dimensions, selected bubbles/entities, and other state descriptions. The string has to start and end with a newline, see the example for more details, see also https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/motionchart showChartButtons logical, default=TRUE. FALSE hides the buttons that control the chart type (bubbles / lines / columns) at top right corner. showHeader logical, default=TRUE. FALSE hides the title label of the entities (derived from the label of the first column in the data table). showSelectListComponent logical, default=TRUE. FALSE hides the list of visible entities. showSidePanel logical, default=TRUE. FALSE hides the right hand panel. showXMetricPicker logical, default=TRUE. FALSE hides the metric picker for x. showYMetricPicker logical, default=TRUE. FALSE hides the metric picker for y. showXScalePicker logical, default=TRUE. FALSE hides the scale picker for x. showYScalePicker logical, default=TRUE. FALSE hides the scale picker for y. showAdvancedPanel logical, default=TRUE. FALSE hides disables the options compartment in the settings panel.
chartid	character. If missing (default) a random chart id will be generated based on chart type and tempfile

Value

gvisMotionChart returns list of class "gvis" and "list".

An object of class "gvis" is a list containing at least the following components:

type	Google visualisation type, here 'MotionChart'
chartid	character id of the chart object. Unique chart ids are required to place several charts on the same page.
html	a list with the building blocks for a page header a character string of a html page header: <html>...<body>, chart a named character vector of the chart's building blocks: jsHeader Opening <script> tag and reference to Google's JavaScript library. jsData JavaScript function defining the input data as a JSON object. jsDrawChart JavaScript function combing the data with the visualisation API and user options. jsDisplayChart JavaScript function calling the handler to display the chart. jsFooter End tag </script>. jsChart Call of the jsDisplayChart function. divChart <div> container to embed the chart into the page. caption character string of a standard caption, including data name and chart id. footer character string of a html page footer: </body>...</html>, including the used R and googleVis version and link to Google's Terms of Use.

Warnings

Because of Flash security settings the chart might not work correctly when accessed from a file location in the browser (e.g., file:///c:/webhost/myhost/myviz.html) rather than from a web server URL (e.g. http://www.myhost.com/myviz.html). See the googleVis package vignette and the Macromedia web site (http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/) for more details.

Note

Please note that a timevar with values less than 100 will be shown as years 19xx.

Author(s)

Markus Gesmann [e-mail],

Diego de Castillo [e-mail]

References

Google Motion Chart API: https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/motionchart

Follow the link for Google's data policy.

In 2006 Hans Rosling gave an inspiring talk at TED http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html about social and economic developments in the world over the last 50 years, which challenged the views and perceptions of many listeners. Rosling had used extensive data analysis to reach his conclusions. To visualise his talk, he and his team at Gapminder http://www.gapminder.org had developed animated bubble charts, aka motion charts.

In March 2007 Google acquired Trendalyzer from the Gapminder Foundation and the Gapminder team of developers joined Google in California in April 2007.

Yihui Xie, the maintainer of the animation-package showed in an early blog entry the usage of the Google Motion Chart API with R:

http://yihui.name/en/2008/11/brownian-motion-using-google-visualization-api-and-r/

Further examples of displaying data with motion charts are available via the Google Public Data Explorer: http://www.google.com/publicdata/home.

Stephen Thompson at Lloyd's developed an Excel version that mimics much of the functionality of the Google motion charts: http://www.lloyds.com/The-Market/Tools-and-Resources/Resources/Statistics-Relating-to-Lloyds/Visualisation

See Also

See also print.gvis, plot.gvis for printing and plotting methods, and also the animation-package and its function Rosling.bubbles.

Examples

## Please note that by default the googleVis plot command
## will open a browser window and requires Flash and Internet
## connection to display the visualisation.

Fruits	
## timevar Year
M1 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, idvar="Fruit", timevar="Year")
str(M1)
## print.gvis, will concatenate the list into a one long string
M1

plot(M1)

## Combine with another chart, e.g. table
tbl <- gvisTable(Fruits, options=list(height=220))
Mtbl <- gvisMerge(M1, tbl)
plot(Mtbl)

## Not run: 
## Usage of date variable
M2 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, idvar="Fruit", timevar="Date",
                               date.format = "%Y%m%d") 
plot(M2)

## Display weekly data:
M3 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, "Fruit", "Date", date.format="%YW%W")

plot(M3) 

## End(Not run)
## Options: no side panel on the right
M4 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits,"Fruit", "Year",
                 options=list(showSidePanel=FALSE))
plot(M4)

## Options: trails un-ticked
M5 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, "Fruit", "Year",
                 options=list(state='{"showTrails":false};'))

plot(M5)

## You can change some of displaying settings via the browser,
## e.g. the level of opacity of non-selected items, or the chart type.
## The state string from the 'Advanced' tab can be used to set those
## settings via R. Just copy and past the string from the browser into
## the argument state of the options list.
## Here is an example of a motion chart, with an initial line chart
## displayed. Ensure that you have a newline at the start and end of
## your settings string.

myStateSettings <-'
{"xZoomedDataMin":1199145600000,"colorOption":"2",
"duration":{"timeUnit":"Y","multiplier":1},"yLambda":1,
"yAxisOption":"4","sizeOption":"_UNISIZE",
"iconKeySettings":[],"xLambda":1,"nonSelectedAlpha":0,
"xZoomedDataMax":1262304000000,"iconType":"LINE",
"dimensions":{"iconDimensions":["dim0"]},
"showTrails":false,"uniColorForNonSelected":false,
"xAxisOption":"_TIME","orderedByX":false,"playDuration":15000,
"xZoomedIn":false,"time":"2010","yZoomedDataMin":0,
"yZoomedIn":false,"orderedByY":false,"yZoomedDataMax":100}
'
M6a <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, "Fruit", "Year", options=list(state=myStateSettings))
plot(M6a)

## Newline set explicitly
myStateSettings <-'\n{"iconType":"LINE"}\n'
M6b <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, "Fruit", "Year", options=list(state=myStateSettings))
plot(M6b)


## Define which columns are used for the initial setup of the various
## dimensions
M7 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, idvar="Fruit", timevar="Year",
                              xvar="Profit", yvar="Expenses",
                              colorvar="Location", sizevar="Sales")
plot(M7)

## For more information see:
## https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/motionchart

## See also the demo(WorldBank). It demonstrates how you can access
## country level data from the World Bank to create Gapminder-like
## plots.

jburos/GoogleVis documentation built on May 18, 2019, 9:19 p.m.