[R-sig-Geo] Global mapping of multiple categories by colour

[Rhona Govender]

Dear All,

Sorry for cross posting, I have been kindly directed here by the r help group.

I have to make a last minute global map. I'm trying to do this in r,
but I am a beginner.

I have a global dataset of dependent values (eg. rate of common cold)
for 100/240 countries/offshore territories. I have a predictor
variable (eg. Human development index or HDI). What I would like to do
is colour a global map by HDI grouping (low [0-0.5], medium[0.51-0.7],
high[0.71-1.0]). So for countries that I have data for, if it is low
HDI it would be colour1, medium colour 2, low colour3. For countries
with no data they will be a fourth colour (grey).

Additionally, some small island nations will be too small to be
visualized. Is there a way to manually increase the size of the
colouration to be visible on a map at the global scale?

My data is as such (where blanks are no data):

Country HDI Colds Albania 0.42 .72 Austria 0.89 China 0 .76 .12

I have found this example to try and build off:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11225343/how-to-create-a-world-map-in-r-with-specific-countries-filled-in?rq=1

To change this example, I imported my csv, picked out the columns I
wanted (country ISO3 codes [country] and the hdi predictor[hdi]) and
named them(country=data3$country) then and made it into a data frame
(data3).

I have this code I am confused with:

malMap <- joinCountryData2Map(dF = "data3", joinCode = "ISO3",
nameJoinColumn = "country")

# This will join your malDF data.frame to the country map data

mapCountryData(malMap, nameColumnToPlot="hdi", catMethod =
"categorical", missingCountryCol = gray(.8))

head(data3)

country   hdi
              0
              0
              0
  ASM     0.827
              0
              0

Firstly I get this error as it won't match the country names up:

"Error in joinCountryData2Map(dF = "data3", joinCode = "ISO3",
nameJoinColumn = "country") :  your chosen nameJoinColumn :'country'
seems not to exist in your data, columns ="

How can I change this sample code to colour the three levels of hdi?
Is it possible with this code? Also, is it possible to manually make
the small island nations bigger as they will not appear at this scale.

I'm sorry this is so long. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Sarah