Cartograms
We live in the era of “big data”. Visualizing data is an important step when summarizing information. Geographic maps are a popular means to visualize spatial data, but conventional maps often tell a misleading story. Usually, each map region is displayed with an area proportional to its actual land area.
Unfortunately, equal-area maps usually miscommunicate statistical data. In an election, for example, the land area of a region is irrelevant. Instead, a well-designed infographics should visualize the number of votes in a region.
Cartograms are infographics that rescale map areas in proportion to statistical data, for example population size or the number of votes.
I am developing techniques to calculate cartograms that
- scale all areas correctly,
- keep neighbouring regions adjacent,
- make it easy to identify each region.