R help - Aug 2012 - Plotting Where People Live on a U.S. Map

Hi,

QUESTION TOPIC #1
I have some data I want to plot on a map. But what I have are home addresses:
street, City, State, complete postal code--i.e 95377-1234. Is there a way to
plot this data or do I need latitudinal and longitude coordinates? If so how do
I convert them? Is there a package that will do the conversion in R?

QUESTION TOPIC #2
I was trying to experiment with this code that I found at the site below but got
a message that indicated that the "map" function is not found. So I
tried installing the maps package but got the below message. Is there an
alternative way of doing this (please refer to URL below)?

# The message I got:
> install.packages("map")
Warning message:
package 'map' is not available (for R version 2.15.0)

# The code I tried to run:
states <- data.frame(map("state",
plot=FALSE)[c("x","y")])
colnames(states) <- c("Lon","Lat")
ggplot(states, aes(x=Lon, y=Lat)) + geom_path()
                + geom_point(alpha=0.6,size=0.3,data=subway)

# Where I got the code from and also an image of what I am attempting to do
(please enter this in your URL)
http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&biw=1790&bih=845&tbm=isch&tbnid=4rMjXYA_w1qDiM:&imgrefurl=http://www.informaniac.net/&docid=SJqcsPghztrj0M&imgurl=http://lh5.ggpht.com/_yBbodrC25kU/Ta6Ifqr0ZLI/AAAAAAABRCg/98rIF-kMMns/map%25255B7%25255D.png&w=512&h=319&ei=mgsbUIzqJuKbiAL5v4DQDg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=176&vpy=477&dur=5741&hovh=177&hovw=285&tx=110&ty=113&sig=117496213270544868088&page=2&tbnh=125&tbnw=200&start=32&ndsp=40&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:32,i:175

Dan

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Hi Dan,

For question 1, yes you'll need geographic coordinates. I thinknit's
possible to get a shapefile of zip codes, but maybe someone else will know
the details.

For #2, you  probably want maps instead of map, and you need to load a
package before you can use it:
install.packages("maps")
library(maps)
and then your code.

Sarah

On Thursday, August 2, 2012, Lopez, Dan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> QUESTION TOPIC #1
> I have some data I want to plot on a map. But what I have are home
> addresses: street, City, State, complete postal code--i.e 95377-1234. Is
> there a way to plot this data or do I need latitudinal and longitude
> coordinates? If so how do I convert them? Is there a package that will do
> the conversion in R?
>
> QUESTION TOPIC #2
> I was trying to experiment with this code that I found at the site below
> but got a message that indicated that the "map" function is not
found. So I
> tried installing the maps package but got the below message. Is there an
> alternative way of doing this (please refer to URL below)?
>
> # The message I got:
> > install.packages("map")
> Warning message:
> package 'map' is not available (for R version 2.15.0)
>
> # The code I tried to run:
> states <- data.frame(map("state",
plot=FALSE)[c("x","y")])
> colnames(states) <- c("Lon","Lat")
> ggplot(states, aes(x=Lon, y=Lat)) + geom_path()
>                 + geom_point(alpha=0.6,size=0.3,data=subway)
>
> # Where I got the code from and also an image of what I am attempting to
> do (please enter this in your URL)
>
>
http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&biw=1790&bih=845&tbm=isch&tbnid=4rMjXYA_w1qDiM:&imgrefurl=http://www.informaniac.net/&docid=SJqcsPghztrj0M&imgurl=http://lh5.ggpht.com/_yBbodrC25kU/Ta6Ifqr0ZLI/AAAAAAABRCg/98rIF-kMMns/map%25255B7%25255D.png&w=512&h=319&ei=mgsbUIzqJuKbiAL5v4DQDg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=176&vpy=477&dur=5741&hovh=177&hovw=285&tx=110&ty=113&sig=117496213270544868088&page=2&tbnh=125&tbnw=200&start=32&ndsp=40&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:32,i:175
>
> Dan
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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>

-- 
Sarah Goslee
http://www.stringpage.com
http://www.sarahgoslee.com
http://www.functionaldiversity.org

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