Tuesday, November 07, 2006
From now on, any time I see a dot map I will slow down and really take a look. It's the least I can do to pay homage to the hours it takes to place individual tiny dots on a map.
This map presented a number of challenges, in particular the number of dots to use and the size to choose. The number was important because I was not mapping an entire population, only about 2 percent- the veterans. I was concerned that if I chose to have one dot represent 100 veterans the state would look overrun with vets. So I chose to make one dot represent 200 vets, this puts a little over 1000 dots on the map. As for size I had the same problem, I did not want them to be too big because the pattern wouldn't show up, but then if it's too small it would look like there is more accuracy in the map then there actually is-I do not have actual addresses to place all these vets. I finally decided on this size because it is an inbetween size that adequately represents the vets but doesn't look too accurate.
I placed the dots geographically. It makes sense that clustering of this sample of the population would follow the distribution of the larger population so that is where I placed the majority of the dots. According to my atlas, many of the outlying towns have small populations of 200-300 people or so. When I ran across 3 or so towns like that I would place a dot in that vicinity trying to weight it toward the town with the largest population.
