R help - Feb 2015 - Create a heat map with German postal codes

Hi,

I am tasked with making a map of German postal codes for a few major cities
in Germany. Each postal code will have a differnt color, depending on a
metric. For simplicity, let's just use population density.

This is what I have achieved so far for London (which I used as an
example). I have been able to create a base map using the tutorials. I was
able to import a shapefile of postal codes and display that on the map. I
was able to create points on the map.

What I am not able to do is color in each postal code according to density.
The other problem I have is with actually creating a map that zooms in on
the right area. I know you can limit the area with xlim and ylim, but I
can't figure out sensible values for eacy of these parameters.

I have not found a shapefile yet for German postal codes.

Last, should I use worldmaps, or a more recent package such as ggmap or
rworldmap? I have seen that worldmaps is very outdated.

We have commercial software such as Tableau and Map Point (since
discontinued) floating around here. Both of these software automatically
map districts for US and London postal codes. However, I would like to use
an open source solution if for no other reason than these commercial
software might not work for other regions, and R seems better to extend for
special cases.

Thanks!

Paul

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Hi Paul,
Have you seen this site?

http://blog.oraylis.de/2010/05/german-map-spatial-data-for-plz-postal-code-regions/

This seems to have the solution you want, and perhaps some useful
stuff about aggregating postal zones. For one off maps, I usually just
look at par("usr") to get the current plot limits and then trial and
eyeball the limits for the area I want.

Jim


On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Paul Tremblay <paulhtremblay at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am tasked with making a map of German postal codes for a few major cities
> in Germany. Each postal code will have a differnt color, depending on a
> metric. For simplicity, let's just use population density.
>
> This is what I have achieved so far for London (which I used as an
> example). I have been able to create a base map using the tutorials. I was
> able to import a shapefile of postal codes and display that on the map. I
> was able to create points on the map.
>
> What I am not able to do is color in each postal code according to density.
> The other problem I have is with actually creating a map that zooms in on
> the right area. I know you can limit the area with xlim and ylim, but I
> can't figure out sensible values for eacy of these parameters.
>
> I have not found a shapefile yet for German postal codes.
>
> Last, should I use worldmaps, or a more recent package such as ggmap or
> rworldmap? I have seen that worldmaps is very outdated.
>
> We have commercial software such as Tableau and Map Point (since
> discontinued) floating around here. Both of these software automatically
> map districts for US and London postal codes. However, I would like to use
> an open source solution if for no other reason than these commercial
> software might not work for other regions, and R seems better to extend for
> special cases.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Paul
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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