Digital Mapping
What’s left?
Today - Finish Choropleth Maps/Cartograms/Visual Hierarchy
Thursday/Next Week - Math in Review, non-quantitative aspects of mapping, and course conclusion
Labs 11 (Due on Tuesday 16th) and 12 (Due by Friday the 26th) are reflection assignments
I’ll go over the written portion that is due on the 16th on Thursday
Final week of class
Thursday the 18th – Review Sheet Released
Tuesday April 23rd Review Session and Final Exam Released
Thursday April 25th – Drop in Lab During Lab Time
Final exam due by 5pm on Friday the 26th (concludes class)
Place and Identity
Conclusion
What is appealing about data analysis and visualization?
Promise of truth telling through objectivity
Make a complex and intimidating world stable
Numbers can be used to make demands
Like putting phd on your website (flat earth)
Maps show where things are!
A Map is a way of telling a story with spatial data
How wide spread is poverty?
What areas need new roads
Where do we concentrate our efforts to stop global warming?
Where do we put the new Whole Foods?
What city would benefit most from renewable energy?
What neighborhood do you want to live in when you leave Temple?
In what area are most folks being displaced/affected by gentrification in Kensington?
What neighborhoods have the highest average Air BnB price in Philadelphia?
WHY?????
Principles of Choropleth Mapping…
Choro = Color
Aggregated – Entire unit= one value
Lighter is less
Darker is more
One Color!
Classes and Class Breaks
Choropleth maps are great but there are issues…
MAUP
Modifiable Areal Unit Problem
“MAUP refers to the fact that the observed aggregated values will vary according to how we draw our area boundaries”
Gerrymandering
Ecological Fallacy
Confusion between individuals and groups
Classification – The way to tell a story…
What kind of argument do you want to make?
Manipulate your audience please…
Equal Interval vs. Quantile in Lab
Which Classification should I use?
Each category is a color bucket
What is the size/range of your buckets?
Will your observations be evenly distributed into your buckets – or will you put more observations in some buckets than others?
Do you want your buckets to be different sizes (range of values) and filled equally (number of values in each bucket)?
Do you want all of your buckets to be the same size (equal intervals) but filled differently (number of values in each bucket)
Your task as cartographer
Determine meaningful buckets for your data
What kind of argument do you want to make?
Manipulate your audience please
Ways of Improving Your maps?
Playing with visual hierarchy
Studying how human brains see things
Style and Signature
North Arrow choice and location
Scale Bar location and style
Colors and Fonts on legend/title
Cartography name can be like a DJ name
What message are you trying to get across (aesthetics count)
What story are you trying to tell?
Stories are data with a soul
Fivethirtyeight: 35 years of American Death
What makes this map badass? What story does it tell?
You too can be one of these people!!!!
DESIGN AND DATA!!!!!
We can use data visualizations to show how things have evolved over time…
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/04/technology/jobs-not-mobs.html
Why did they use round symbols?
Color, Differentiation, and size of symbols
What story are we telling?
Data Visualization About Voter Turnout
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/02/us/politics/early-voting.html
Cartogram – Another way to visualize spatial data
Area of places is represented by a magnitude of value instead of actual size…
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Why do you think cartograms work well for visualizing election data at a national scale?
Types of cartograms
AREA
Contiguous
Non-contiguous
Dorling
Which cartograms depends on your audience and other design considerations.
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Contiguous
Sharing a boundary, connecting without a break.
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Contiguous
Sharing a boundary, connecting without a break.
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Non-contiguous
The spatial units do not have to maintain connectivity with their adjacent objects.
By freeing the units from their adjacent objects, they can grow or shrink in size and still maintain their shape.
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Contiguous and Non-Contiguous Cartograms
Here is the US population example in both styles…
ENV 2006
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Why aren’t there more of these?
They are ugly!!!!
Dorling
Instead of enlarging or shrinking the objects themselves, the cartographer will replace the objects with a uniform shape, usually a circle, of the appropriate size.
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Dorling Cartogram (
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Dorling Cartogram
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