Sunday, January 27, 2008
Larry Sabato of UVa has posted these political maps. In the first one, the all gray map, the counties of Virginia have been redrawn according to population. It is in this sense a form of a contiguous cartogram. I think it is a great map because it has the ability of a cartogram to show the relationships within the data that a "regular" map doesn't show. The strength of this particular cartogram is that the shape of Virginia itself has not been altered. I am not sure anyone living in Virginia is terribly sensitive to shape of the counties - they are all so irregular - therefore the information of potential voting power pops right out of the presentation.
The second map, which appears on top, is colorized to highlight regions. This further emphasizes the population size of the areas like Richmond and Northern Virginia.
Labels: Lab 0
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Hello,
This is my class blog for Geography 590 at George Mason University in the Spring of 2008. I am very excited to be in cartography again!
I just went out to Google Images and typed in "cartograms" and I found this really cool Dorling cartogram of the population of Michigan. This is the website that has the map. While I think the map concept is cool I really hate the colors, it looks like the walls of my elementary school--ug. I don't think there is enough contrast between the colors, it is flat and boring. I wonder about the inset map which does not have the same neat line, it hardly looks like it belongs to the same map.
