ggplot/mapping US counties — problems with visualization shapes in R

Question

So I have a data frame in R called obesity_map which basically gives me the state, county, and obesity rate per county. It looks more or less like this:

obesity_map = data.frame(state, county, obesity_rate)

I'm trying to visualize this on the map by showing various obesity rates per county throughout the US with this:

us.state.map <- map_data('state')
head(us.state.map)
states <- levels(as.factor(us.state.map$region))
df <- data.frame(region = states, value = runif(length(states), min=0, max=100),stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

map.data <- merge(us.state.map, df, by='region', all=T)
map.data <- map.data[order(map.data$order),]
head(map.data)

map.county <- map_data('county')
county.obesity <- data.frame(region = obesity_map$state, subregion = obesity_map$county, value = obesity_map$obesity_rate)
map.county <- merge(county.obesity, map.county, all=TRUE)
ggplot(map.county, aes(x = long, y = lat, group=group, fill=as.factor(value))) + geom_polygon(colour = "white", size = 0.1)

And it basically creates an image that looks like this:

As you can see, the US is divided into strange shapes, the colors aren't one consistent color in varying gradients, and you can't make much from it. But what I really want is something like this below but with each county filled in:

I'm fairly new to this so I'd appreciate any and all help!

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Edit:

Here's the output of the dput:

dput(obesity_map)

structure(list(X = 1:3141, FIPS = c(1L, 3L, 5L, 7L, 9L, 11L, 
13L, 15L, 17L, 19L, 21L, 23L, 25L, 27L, 29L, 31L, 33L, 35L, 37L, 
39L, 41L, 43L, 45L, 47L, 49L, 51L, 53L, 55L, 57L, 59L, 61L, 63L, 
65L, 67L, 69L, 71L, 73L, 75L, 77L, 79L, 81L, 83L, 85L, 87L, 89L, 
91L, 93L, 95L, 97L, 99L, 101L, 103L, 105L, 107L, 109L, 111L, 
113L, 115L, 117L, 119L, 121L, 123L, 125L, 127L, 129L, 131L, 133L, 
13L, 16L, 20L, 50L, 60L, 68L, 70L, 90L, 100L, 110L, 122L, 130L, 
150L, 164L, 170L, 180L, 185L, 188L, 201L, 220L, 232L, 240L, 261L, 
270L, 280L, 282L, 290L, 1L, 3L, 5L, 7L, 9L, 11L, 12L, 13L, 15L, 
17L, 19L, 21L, 23L, 25L, 27L, 1L, 3L, 5L, 7L, 9L, 11L, 13L, 15L, 
17L, 19L, 21L, 23L, 25L, 27L, 29L, 31L, 33L, 35L, 37L, 39L, 41L, 

It's a huge amount of numbers because it's for every US county so I abbreviated the results and put in the first couple lines.

Basically, the data frame looks like this though:

print(head(obesity_map))


  X FIPS state_names county_names obesity
1 1    1     Alabama      Autauga    24.5
2 2    3     Alabama      Baldwin    23.6
3 3    5     Alabama      Barbour    25.6
4 4    7     Alabama         Bibb     0.0
5 5    9     Alabama       Blount    24.2
6 6   11     Alabama      Bullock     0.0

I also tried using ggcounty by following the example put up but I keep getting an error. I'm not entirely sure what I've done wrong:

library(ggcounty)

# breaks
obesity_map$obese <- cut(obesity_map$obesity, 
                  breaks=c(0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30), 
                  labels=c("1", "2", "3", "4", 
                           "5", "6"),
                  include.lowest=TRUE)

# get the US counties map (lower 48)
us <- ggcounty.us()

# start the plot with our base map
gg <- us$g

# add a new geom with our population (choropleth)
gg <- gg + geom_map(data=obesity_map, map=us$map,
                aes(map_id=FIPS, fill=obesity_map$obese), 
                color="white", size=0.125)

But I always end up getting an error saying: "Error: Argument must be coercible to non-negative integer"

Any idea? Thanks again for all your help! I appreciate it so much.

Answer 1

Maybe a little late for another answer, but still worthwhile to share I think.

The reading and preprocessing of the data is similar to jlhoward's answer, with some differences:

library(tmap)      # package for plotting
library(readxl)    # for reading Excel
library(maptools)  # for unionSpatialPolygons

# download data
download.file("http://www.ers.usda.gov/datafiles/Food_Environment_Atlas/Data_Access_and_Documentation_Downloads/Current_Version/DataDownload.xls", destfile = "DataDownload.xls", mode="wb")
df <- read_excel("DataDownload.xls", sheet = "HEALTH")

# download shape (a little less detail than in the other scripts)
f <- tempfile()
download.file("http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/GENZ2010/gz_2010_us_050_00_20m.zip", destfile = f)
unzip(f, exdir = ".")
US <- read_shape("gz_2010_us_050_00_20m.shp")

# leave out AK, HI, and PR (state FIPS: 02, 15, and 72)
US <- US[!(US$STATE %in% c("02","15","72")),]  

# append data to shape
US$FIPS <- paste0(US$STATE, US$COUNTY)
US <- append_data(US, df, key.shp = "FIPS", key.data = "FIPS")

When the correct data is attached to the shape object, a choropleth can be drawn with one line of code:

qtm(US, fill = "PCT_OBESE_ADULTS10")

This could be enhanced by adding state borders, a better projection, and a title:

# create shape object with state polygons
US_states <- unionSpatialPolygons(US, IDs=US$STATE)

tm_shape(US, projection="+init=epsg:2163") +
  tm_polygons("PCT_OBESE_ADULTS10", border.col = "grey30", title="") +
tm_shape(US_states) +
  tm_borders(lwd=2, col = "black", alpha = .5) +
tm_layout(title="2010 Adult Obesity by County, percent", 
          title.position = c("center", "top"),
          legend.text.size=1)