In Hans Rosling’s attractive talk Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen, he used a lot of bubble plots to illustrate trends
behind the data over time. This function gives an imitation of those moving
bubbles, besides, as this function is based on symbols, we can
also make use of other symbols such as squares, rectangles, thermometers,
etc.
Suppose we have observations of \(n\) individuals over
ani.options('nmax') years. In this animation, the data of each year
will be shown in the bubbles (symbols) plot; as time goes on, certain trends
will be revealed (like those in Rosling’s talk). Please note that the
arrangement of the data for bubbles (symbols) should be a matrix like
\(A_{ijk}\) in which \(i\) is the individual id (from 1 to n), \(j\)
denotes the \(j\)-th variable (from 1 to p) and \(k\) indicates the time
from 1 to ani.options('nmax').
And the length of x and y should be equal to the number of rows
of this matrix.
library(animation)
ani.options(interval = 0.2, nmax = 50)
## use default arguments (random numbers); you may try to find the real data
par(mar = c(4, 4, 0.2, 0.2))
Rosling.bubbles()
## rectangles
Rosling.bubbles(type = "rectangles", data = matrix(abs(rnorm(50 * 10 * 2)), ncol = 2))
Donate
As a freelancer (currently working as a contractor) and a dad of three kids, I truly appreciate your donation to support my writing and open-source software development! Your contribution helps me cope with financial uncertainty better, so I can spend more time on producing high-quality content and software. You can make a donation through methods below.
-
Venmo:
@yihui_xie, or Zelle:xie@yihui.name -
Paypal
-
If you have a Paypal account, you can follow the link https://paypal.me/YihuiXie or find me on Paypal via my email
xie@yihui.name. Please choose the payment type as “Family and Friends” (instead of “Goods and Services”) to avoid extra fees. -
If you don’t have Paypal, you may donate through this link via your debit or credit card. Paypal will charge a fee on my side.
-
-
Other ways:
WeChat Pay (微信支付：谢益辉) Alipay (支付宝：谢益辉) 
When sending money, please be sure to add a note “gift” or “donation” if possible, so it won’t be treated as my taxable income but a genuine gift. Needless to say, donation is completely voluntary and I appreciate any amount you can give.
Please feel free to email me if you prefer a different way to give. Thank you very much!
I’ll give back a significant portion of the donations to the open-source community and charities. For the record, I received about $30,000 in total (before tax) in 2024-25, and gave back about $15,000 (after tax).