Not related to the rather insightful content of this article: for a long time I have had mixed feelings about the visualizations of datasets per US state in a single figure using a rectangular or hexagonal grid. I have recently started getting used to some of these plots in the NYTimes and can locate the states rather quickly, even if their location doesn't agree with my mental model of where the state is in a map. Anyone knows of an R or python package for making the plots in the way shown in this article?