The Pros & Cons of Choropleth maps (Blot maps / Patch maps) | Using ... https://viscomvibz.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/the-pros-cons-of-chorop...

The Pros & Cons of Choropleth maps (Blot maps /

Patch maps)

By eier / March 17, 2012 / Reviews, What up / Leave a comment

The choropleth map is one of the most frequently used maps in geography. It uses a coloring scheme
(dierent colors or a graduated color scale) inside dened areas on a map in order to show value levels
and indicate the average values of some property or quantity in those areas.

Pros:
Can eectively be used to report area values at virtually any scale, from global to local and the data
can be thought about in many dierent ways at many dierent levels of analysis, from general overall
pa erns to the detection of details.
Helpful for nding intriguing hot spots, detecting relationships between the encoded variable and
geographic location (and the many variables entangled with location), or le ing people know how their
area compares with others.

Cons:
Since the choropleth map uses an average number to represent dened areas, the viewer can not
gain detailed information or perspective on any areas internal conditions. This can be solved by
making the map interactive (like The Geography of Government Benets (h p://www.nytimes.com
/interactive/2012/02/12/us/entitlement-map.html) from The New York Times)
The areas are not uniform: equating the visual importance of each county with its geographic area
rather than with the number of people living in there, giving sparsely populated areas great visual
emphasis. This can be solved by using the method of mesh/grid-square mapping (dividing the map into
equal sized units/squares and then color each one according to the data being encoded). An example
of a mesh map (the grid squares are 1km on a side) :

(h ps://viscomvibz.les.wordpress.com/2012/03
/ei_tokyomapp41.jpg)

Remember to be careful and nd out if the choropleth map is telling you the truth. You will need a lot
be er data than county-by-county aggregate numbers to learn what is really going on.

A nice way to do a choropleth map: Measuring the U.S. Melting Pot (h p://go.bloomberg.com
/multimedia/measuring-the-u-s-melting-pot/) by David Yanofsky from Bloomberg News:
Being able to select two heritages and see how they compare with each other, instead of just selecting one
heritage, gives you a relative scale and the map becomes a whole lot more useful (of course I had to compare

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The Pros & Cons of Choropleth maps (Blot maps / Patch maps) | Using ... https://viscomvibz.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/the-pros-cons-of-chorop...

the Norwegains with the Swedes):

(h p://go.bloomberg.com/multimedia/measuring-the-u-s-melting-pot/)

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