Finding the first letter of each state's median county

med_county_letter.R

# install.packages("usa")

library(tidyverse)

x <- usa::counties %>% 
  filter(state %in% state.abb) %>% 
  group_by(state) %>% 
  arrange(name, .by_group = TRUE) %>% 
  mutate(first_letter = str_sub(name, end = 1)) %>% 
  filter(first_letter == first_letter[length(first_letter)/2]) %>% 
  slice(1) %>% 
  mutate(place = as.factor(first_letter))

x$first_letter <- factor(
  x = x$first_letter,
  levels = LETTERS
)

x %>% 
  arrange(first_letter) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(state, as.integer(first_letter)), y = first_letter)) +
  geom_col(aes(fill = first_letter)) +
  scale_fill_viridis_d(guide = FALSE, end = 0.9) +
  geom_text(aes(label = name, y = 3), nudge_y = -1) +
  labs(
    x = "State",
    y = "Median County First Letter",
    title = "States by median county first letter",
    caption = "Source: https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/home/?cid=nrcs143_013697"
  ) +
  coord_flip()

ggsave(
  filename = "~/Pictures/med_county.png",
  width = 6,
  height = 12,
  dpi = "retina"
)