rk.apyramid: High-Impact Age Pyramids for RKWard

rk.apyramid provides a high-performance graphical interface for the {apyramid} package within RKWard, enhanced with Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic's "Storytelling with Data" (SWD) principles. It allows users to create publication-quality age pyramids from standard data frames, complex survey objects (survey), and srvyr (tbl_svy) objects with instant execution even on large datasets.

🚀 What's New in Version 0.1.3

• Symmetric Axes (Centering Fix): Added a "Center Pyramid" option. By default, charts now force the axes to be symmetric based on the largest group. This prevents label truncation when comparing highly unbalanced populations (e.g., a male-dominated industry vs. a small female workforce).
• Cleaner Subsets:
  • Start Bins at: You can now define the starting age for automatic binning (e.g., start at 15). This eliminates empty bars at the bottom when plotting labor force data (15+).
  • Drop Unused Levels: Automatically removes empty age factor levels, ensuring the chart only displays relevant categories.

What's New in Version 0.1.2

• Dynamic Subsetting: Added a "Subset Expression" field in the Variables tab. You can now filter your data (e.g., region == 'North' or age >= 15) directly within the plugin dialog before plotting.

Features

Data Handling

• Triple Input Mode: Works seamlessly with data.frame, survey.design, and srvyr objects.
• Smart Binning: Automatically cut() numeric age variables into custom intervals (e.g., 5-year cohorts).
  • New: Define custom start points and remove empty levels on the fly.
• Pre-processing Filter: Optional R expression to subset data before aggregation.

Visualization & Layout

• Stacked Pyramids: Supports secondary grouping (e.g., Type of Employment) within the age bars.
• Symmetric Layouts: Forces the "zero" line to stay centered even if one side is significantly larger than the other.
• Proportions vs. Counts: Toggle between distribution percentages or raw weighted totals.
• Legend Control: Precision side-by-side wrapping for both Legend Titles and individual labels to ensure the legend fits the plot margin.
• SWD Aesthetics: Horizontal Y-axis titles, capped axes (lemon), and smart unit formatting (e.g., 6M instead of 6,000,000).

📦 Installation

This plugin is not yet on CRAN. To install it, use the remotes or devtools package in RKWard.

1. Open RKWard.

2. Run the following command in the R Console:

   # If you don't have devtools installed:
   # install.packages("devtools")
   
   local({
     require(devtools)
     install_github("AlfCano/rk.apyramid", force = TRUE)
   })
   

3. Restart RKWard to load the new menu entries.

💻 Usage

Once installed, the plugin is organized under:

Survey -> Graphs -> Age Pyramid

1. Select your data object (Dataframe, Survey, or srvyr).
2. (Optional) Enter a Subset Expression (e.g., age >= 15).
3. Select the Age variable and the Split variable (e.g., Sex).
4. Configure Age Processing:
   • Set Bin Width (e.g., 5 years).
   • Set Start Bins at (e.g., 15) to match your subset.
5. Configure Settings: Check "Center Pyramid" to ensure labels aren't cut off.
6. Click Submit.

🛠️ Dependencies

This plugin relies on the following R packages:

• apyramid, ggplot2, survey, srvyr
• lemon (Capped axes)
• scales (Label formatting)
• dplyr, stringr, RColorBrewer

Troubleshooting: Errors installing devtools or missing binary dependencies (Windows)

If you encounter errors mentioning "non-zero exit status" or requirements for compilation when installing packages, it is likely because the R version bundled with RKWard is older than the current CRAN standard.

Workaround:

1. Download and install the latest version of R from CRAN.
2. Open RKWard and go to the Settings menu.
3. Run the "Installation Checker".
4. Point RKWard to the newly installed R version.

✍️ Author & License

• Author: Alfonso Cano (alfonso.cano@correo.buap.mx)
• Assisted by: Gemini, a large language model from Google.
• License: GPL (>= 3)