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The World's Countries
colored by their first and last letter
... and how much area each letter covers
colored by their first and last letter
... and how much area each letter covers
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Did you ever wonder which first letter is the most common used for country names?
Or which makes up the largest land masses on our globe? I wouldn't be surprised if not...
Nevertheless, this little coding challenge became a fun project with interesting outcomes that hopefully triggers curiosity and engagement! The final result would make up a nice alphabet poster which could help to train the alphabet, to learn the names of the countries of the world, and to gain some nerdy knowledge for the next house party discussion!
Background: While searching for a cool variable for an upcoming workshop session on creating maps with R and ggplot2, I came up with the idea to visualize name of each country. But not the full name—that would be too silly and not insightful at all—but the first letter of each country. When drafting the first map, it quickly became obvious that mapping color to all 26 letters (or better 25 letters since there is no country starting with X) is not helpful at all. A quick search showed that there are a few colorful maps, struggling with the same problem (here and here) or that do not permit to see the complete data by aggregating rare letters. I quickly came up to use small multiples, which would allow for an easy identification of all countries starting with a particular letter and the landmass covered by these countries.
Countries and Areas by First Letter
Countries and Areas by Last Letter
Details
Single Versions of the Small Multiples
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Single Versions of the Overview Maps
