Working with Geographic Data Columns

This tutorial describes how geographic attributes can be visualized automatically with Lux. Lux recognizes any columns named state and country that contains US States or worldwide countries as geographic attributes. Geographic attributes are automatically plotted against other attributes in the dataset as choropleths maps in Lux.

Map of US States

Below we look at an example COVID-19 dataset that has a state column, with each row representing data for a state in the US.

df = pd.read_csv("https://github.com/covidvis/covid19-vis/blob/master/data/interventionFootprintByState.csv?raw=True",index_col=0)
df

Under the Geographical tab on the Lux widget, we immediately see a list of choropleths map demonstrating how different attributes vary by state.

Geographic tab of COVID-19 dataset

state is a special keyword that allows Lux to identify columns containing US states. If your dataframe contains a column with state information and the geographical visualization is not being displayed, you may have to rename the column as state.

Lux uses the python-us package to define the naming conventions for US states. The state column can either contain the full state name (e.g. “California”), abbreviation (e.g. “CA”), or FIPS code (e.g. 06) as values.

Map of World Countries

Below we look at the Happy Planet Index (HPI) dataset that has a country column with each row representing data for a country in the world.

df = pd.read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lux-org/lux-datasets/master/data/hpi.csv")
df

Under the “Geographical” tab on the Lux widget, we immediately see a list of choropleths maps demonstrating how attributes vary by country.

Geographic tab of HPI dataset

country is a special keyword that allows Lux to identify columns containing world countries. If your dataframe contains a column with country information and the geographical visualization is not being displayed, you may have to rename the column as country.

Lux uses the iso3166 package to define the naming conventions for world countries. The country column can either contain full country name (e.g. “Afghanistan”), abbreviations (e.g. “AF” or “AFG”), or ISO code (e.g. 004) as values.