How to graph by label in R

Question

I have the following data:

Country             Quality.of.life.index
1   Switzerland     206.23
2   United States   195.55
3   Germany         192.69
4   Sweden          180.92
...

I am looking for a way to make a graph with 'Country' labels on the left and a bar corresponding to their Quality.of.life.index values on the right. Any way to do this in R?

Here's an example of what I mean: http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/04/15/global-morality/table/gambling/

Answer 1

Elaborating on @r2evans's comment, here's barplot:

par(mar = c(4, 7, 4, 2))              ## This sets the left margin wider
barplot(mydf$Quality.of.life.index,   ## The vector of values you want to plot
        names.arg=mydf$Country,       ## The labels
        horiz=TRUE, las = 1)          ## Horizontal bars and labels

This is assuming the following starting data:

mydf <- data.frame(
  Country = c("Switzerland", "United States", "Germany", "Sweden"), 
  Quality.of.life.index = c(206.23, 195.55, 192.69, 180.92))
mydf
#         Country Quality.of.life.index
# 1   Switzerland                206.23
# 2 United States                195.55
# 3       Germany                192.69
# 4        Sweden                180.92

Answer 2

A dotplot is also a nice choice for this kind of data (using the data @Richard prepared)

#using base graphics
dotchart(structure(QofLife, names=Country), xlab = 'Quality of Life',main="graphics")

#using lattice
require(lattice)
dotplot(Country ~ QofLife, xlab = 'Quality of Life', cex=1.2, main="Lattice")

Answer 3

You could use lattice::barchart. I had to manipulate your data a bit because it wouldn't read. But if you call only the data$Country column, data$QofLife column, etc. it should be fine.

> library(lattice)
> Country <- c('Switzerland', 'USA', 'Germany', 'Sweden')
> QofLife <- c(206.23, 195.55, 192.69, 180.92)
> barchart(Country ~ QofLife, xlab = 'Quality of Life')