gganimate ggplot2 error when using transition_time() after transforming dataset in R… but no error if transformed outside of R

Question

Goal:

Import, transform / prep, and animate a coronavirus dataset from .xlsx using only R.

Text from Reproducible Error:

Answer 1

The problem is with your transformation of the column names into Dates. That seems to introduce NAs into the Dates, and makes the range indeterminate, which gganimate uses for the start and end of the animation.

What worked for me was:

names(wide) = janitor::make_clean_names(names(wide))

and

long <- wide %>%
  gather(Date, Cases, -county_name, -population) %>%
  rename(County = county_name, Population = population) %>%
  mutate(Date = as.Date(str_remove(Date, "cases_"), format = "%m_%d")) %>%
  mutate(Rate = Cases/Population)

long %>% filter(is.na(Date))

Alternatively, you could use str_remove(Date, "\\D+") instead of cleaning up the column names beforehand.