Animated sorted bar chart with bars overtaking each other

Question

Edit: keyword is \'bar chart race\'

How would you go at reproducing this chart from Jaime Albella in R ?

See the animation on visualcapitalist.com o

Answer 1

This is what I came up with, so far, based in good part on @Jon's answer.

p <- gdp  %>%
  # build rank, labels and relative values
  group_by(Year) %>%
  mutate(Rank = rank(-Value),
         Value_rel = Value/Value[Rank==1],
         Value_lbl = paste0(" ",round(Value/1e9)))  %>%
  group_by(Country.Name) %>%
  # keep top 10
  filter(Rank <= 10) %>%
  # plot
  ggplot(aes(-Rank,Value_rel, fill = Country.Name)) +
  geom_col(width = 0.8, position="identity") +
  coord_flip() + 
  geom_text(aes(-Rank,y=0,label = Country.Name,hjust=0)) +       #country label
  geom_text(aes(-Rank,y=Value_rel,label = Value_lbl, hjust=0)) + # value label
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(legend.position = "none",axis.title = element_blank()) +
  # animate along Year
  transition_states(Year,4,1)

animate(p, 100, fps = 25, duration = 20, width = 800, height = 600)

I might come back to improve it.

The moving grid could be simulated by removing the actual grid and having geom_segment lines moving and fading out thanks to an alpha parameter changing when it approaches 100 billion.

To have labels changing values between years (which gives a nice feeling of urgency in the original chart) I think we have no choice but multiplying the rows while interpolating labels, we'll need to interpolate Rank too.

Then with a few minor cosmetic changes we should be pretty close.