title: Plotting Numerical Values on US Maps
body: <p>My data is as follows, I call it shortie in the code:</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-r prettyprint-override"><code>   State  Min  Max   Average
  1     AL  7.0 10.8  8.842857
  2     AK  6.9 10.2  8.095238
  3     AZ  5.4 10.0  6.623810
  4     AR  9.5 15.4 12.157143
  5     CA  5.8  7.9  6.309524
  6     CO  6.5  9.8  7.557143
  7     CT  5.0  7.9  5.700000
  8     DE  5.2  8.4  6.090476
  9     FL  7.0 10.9  8.423810
  10    GA  6.0 10.3  7.094737
  11    HI 15.3 22.6 18.652381
  12    ID  7.8 13.9  9.957143
  13    IL  5.4  8.8  6.300000
  14    IN  6.3  9.6  7.423810
  15    IA  6.1  9.0  6.971429
  16    KS  5.9  9.2  6.880952
  17    KY  6.9 13.5  8.609524
  18    LA  5.6  9.6  7.500000
  19    ME  7.1  9.7  8.004762
  20    MD  5.6  9.7  6.757143
  21    MA  5.5  7.9  5.961905
  22    MI  5.4  8.2  6.171429
  23    MN  5.3  7.7  6.066667
  24    MS  4.8  9.4  6.376190
  25    MO  6.2  9.6  7.114286
  26    MT  7.1  8.6  7.576190
  27    NE  6.3  8.0  6.942857
  28    NV 28.4 99.0 52.614286
  29    NH  6.5  9.5  7.576190
  30    NJ  4.8  7.6  5.676190
  31    NM  4.0  8.8  7.042857
  32    NY  6.5  8.6  7.095238
  33    NC  6.5  8.5  7.233333
  34    ND  5.8  7.5  6.623810
  35    OH  5.7  9.0  6.547619
  36    OK  6.5 10.6  7.323529
  37    OR  6.3  8.9  7.176190
  38    PA  5.3  7.1  5.771429
  39    RI  5.8  8.1  6.885714
  40    SC  6.6 15.9  8.638095
  41    SD  6.7 11.1  8.128571
  42    TN  8.2 15.5 10.838095
  43    TX  6.9 10.5  7.928571
  44    UT  7.3 11.2  9.290476
  45    VT  7.9 10.9  9.071429
  46    VA  6.7 11.4  7.900000
  47    WA  6.0  9.5  6.695238
  48    WV  6.1  8.7  7.133333
  49    WI  5.2  7.9  5.995238
  50    WY  7.1 10.7  8.723810
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I've tried a multitude of ways to plot this data over the US Map, I want individual plots, with just max, min, or average numbers. </p>
  
  <pre class="lang-r prettyprint-override"><code>plot_usmap(regions="states", values="minimum")
  plot_usmap(shortie, regions="states", values="minimum")
  plot_usmap(shortie, regions="states", values="Min")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I either get blank maps or just blank screens with this. I tried defining "minimum" as shortie[2:2] because sometimes I would get the error that Min was not found as a column in the data. </p>
  
  <p>This code runs but as you can see it is very long, and for some reason it doesn't put a value on Florida, and doesn't run if I includes Alaska and Hawaii. The code below is without Alaska and Hawaii. Also I wanted to know what other alternative ways there were to representing the number's min/max/avg visually on the states, beyond just gradients, possibly through ggplot. </p>
  
  <pre class="lang-r prettyprint-override"><code>map.text("state", regions=c("alabama",
                              "arizona",
                              "arkansas",
                              "california",
                              "colorado",
                              "connecticut",
                              "delaware",
                              "district of columbia",
                              "florida",
                              "georgia",
                              "idaho",
                              "illinois",
                              "indiana",
                              "iowa",
                              "kansas",
                              "kentucky",
                              "louisiana",
                              "maine",
                              "maryland",
                              "massachusetts:main",
                              "michigan:north",
                              "minnesota",
                              "mississippi",
                              "missouri",
                              "montana",
                              "nebraska",
                              "nevada",
                              "new hampshire",
                              "new jersey",
                              "new mexico",
                              "new york:main",
                              "north carolina:main",
                              "north dakota",
                              "ohio",
                              "oklahoma",
                              "oregon",
                              "pennsylvania",
                              "rhode island",
                              "south carolina",
                              "south dakota",
                              "tennessee",
                              "texas",
                              "utah",
                              "vermont",
                              "virginia:main",
                              "washington:main",
                              "west virginia",
                              "wisconsin",
                              "wyoming"), labels=as.character(c(7,
  5.4,
  9.5,
  5.8,
  6.5,
  5,
  5.2,
  4,
  7,
  6,
  7.8,
  5.4,
  6.3,
  6.1,
  5.9,
  6.9,
  5.6,
  7.1,
  5.6,
  5.5,
  5.4,
  5.3,
  4.8,
  6.2,
  7.1,
  6.3,
  28.4,
  6.5,
  4.8,
  4,
  6.5,
  6.5,
  5.8,
  5.7,
  6.5,
  6.3,
  5.3,
  5.8,
  6.6,
  6.7,
  8.2,
  6.9,
  7.3,
  7.9,
  6.7,
  6,
  6.1,
  5.2,
  7.1)))
  </code></pre>