fetchGapminder design and implementation

[rpruim]

From @rpruim on June 24, 2013 18:7

I'm wondering about the design of fetchGapminder(). It seems to me that it is really fetching data that we are curating (using fetchData()) and then doing a bit of post processing. Furthermore, only a small set (is this documented anywhere) of Gapminder data sets are available.

I'm wondering whether we shouldn't just put the post-processed data sets online and fetch them with, for example, fetchData("gapminder/Alcohol").

Also, I'm wondering whether we can dispense with the .csv (as I did above) and use read.file() and a designated order of extensions (.rda, .csv, .txt perhaps).

Copied from original issue: ProjectMOSAIC/mosaic#209

[rpruim]

From @nicholasjhorton on June 24, 2013 20:10

I still think that what would be helpful here is a function which could allow someone to download a dataset from GapMinder and plot it on a choropleth map without too much difficulty.

I'm less excited about other datasets as exemplars unless they serve to illustrate examples from the "plotGapminder()" function.

Just my $0.02,

Nick

On Jun 24, 2013, at 2:07 PM, Randall Pruim notifications@github.com wrote:

I'm wondering about the design of fetchGapminder(). It seems to me that it is really fetching data that we are curating (using fetchData()) and then doing a bit of post processing. Furthermore, only a small set (is this documented anywhere) of Gapminder data sets are available.

I'm wondering whether we shouldn't just put the post-processed data sets online and fetch them with, for example, fetchData("gapminder/Alcohol").

Also, I'm wondering whether we can dispense with the .csv (as I did above) and use read.file() and a designated order of extensions (.rda, .csv, .txt perhaps).

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Nicholas Horton
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