Simplest way to plot changes in ranking between two ordered lists in R?

Question

I\'m wondering if there is an easy way to plot the changes in position of elements between 2 lists in the form of a directed bipartite graph in R. For example, list 1 and 2

Answer 1

Here's a solution using igraph functions.

rankchange <- function(list.1, list.2){
    grp = c(rep(0,length(list.1)),rep(1,length(list.2)))
    m = match(list.1, list.2)
    m = m + length(list.1)
    pairs = cbind(1:length(list.1), m)
    pairs = pairs[!is.na(pairs[,1]),]
    pairs = pairs[!is.na(pairs[,2]),]
    g = graph.bipartite(grp, as.vector(t(pairs)), directed=TRUE)
    V(g)$color =  c("red","green")[grp+1]
    V(g)$label = c(list.1, list.2)
    V(g)$x = grp
    V(g)$y = c(length(list.1):1, length(list.2):1)
    g
}

This builds and then plots the graph from your vectors:

g = rankchange(list.1, list.2)
plot(g)

Adjust the colour scheme and symbolism to suit using options detailed in the igraph docs.

Note this is not thoroughly tested (only tried on your sample data) but you can see how it builds a bipartite graph from the code.