Two color map
Being able to use only two colors on a map might at first seems like a limitation. But it makes things much less cluttered and easier to understand, if you choose the right data to visualize.
This is a map of every building in Manhattan. Each blue bubble is a building, and the size of the bubble is determined by how many floors that building has. The background of the map is white, and the building bubbles are blue. The attribute that gives a meaning to the map layout is the bubble size.
Notice how easy it is to pick out the areas where skyscrapers exist. Better yet, zoom in a bit and the city begins to deconstruct. The space between buildings increases and you can see the relative footprints of a high-rise or a walk-up.
Current event map
I had been interested in the number of Americans who joined/tried to join ISIS after reading a couple articles about them. When we read about historical rebel groups, we tend to ignore the fact that that kind of thing can happen in our present day. At least I do. This was an attempt to humanize some of these people.
Using Odyssey.js I constructed a simple list of people and the places of their origin, along with short blurbs taken from the original article (dutifully cited in the first slide). It shows that potential jihadists can be found all over the country, and some are even that guy who "was a goofball in high school."
Showing posts with label Maps Lies & Storytelling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maps Lies & Storytelling. Show all posts
County names = state names and a map of the news
I wanted to make an interesting map of all U.S. counties that are named after U.S. states. I was able to display the shapes of such counties but was unable to do anything further - following the slides verbatim I couldn't get ST_MakeLine to work (after substituting my own table names). Here's the initial map I created using the following SQL.
SELECT * FROM uscounties_merge WHERE name IN (SELECT state_name FROM uscounties_merge)
From here I was hoping to draw lines connecting the center of each shown county to the center of each state, respectively. There are a ton of counties named Washington and I wanted to show the intensities of the various namesakes. Again, I couldn't make the map, but here's a mockup of what could've been.
SELECT * FROM uscounties_merge WHERE name IN (SELECT state_name FROM uscounties_merge)
From here I was hoping to draw lines connecting the center of each shown county to the center of each state, respectively. There are a ton of counties named Washington and I wanted to show the intensities of the various namesakes. Again, I couldn't make the map, but here's a mockup of what could've been.
Three maps, three lies
A lie told about space
Link: Population Density - Derek Watkins
This map shows the world's population density using a slider to move through the various density levels. Viewed at the slider's lowest density threshold, the world's continents are clearly visible. However, when the slider is set at the maximum density, the map is pretty meaningless. Plus, the extreme minimalism and low resolution of this map is very misleading. At 500 people per square kilometer, we should be able to see hundreds of metropolitan areas in the United States (Reno, Nevada is at about 800 people per square kilometer), not to mention plenty of other places in the world.
An unintentional lie
Link: US Stream Names - Derek Watkins
This map is one of a trend of maps showing local terminology across the country, in this case the names of natural watercourses. Because of the high-contrast visual design, it's easy to assume that the blackout areas either have no corresponding data, or that they don't have one predominant nomenclature. This isn't true, though - buried as a footnote to the map description, the gray and black areas are where the terms "river" and "stream" are most common. This map has essentially removed from view the largest data points in favor of the more uncommon names. I think this was an unintentional result of the visual design, as this map would've been just as interesting.
A clear distortion of the truth
Link: A Texan's Map of the United States
Novelty maps often distort reality for comedic effect. This map does exactly that by enlarging the geography of Texas in relation to the rest of the U.S., mimicking the stereotype of the proud Texan's perception of non-Texan areas as inferior and/or physically smaller. The labels also reinforce stereotypical prejudices of Texans.
Link: Population Density - Derek Watkins
This map shows the world's population density using a slider to move through the various density levels. Viewed at the slider's lowest density threshold, the world's continents are clearly visible. However, when the slider is set at the maximum density, the map is pretty meaningless. Plus, the extreme minimalism and low resolution of this map is very misleading. At 500 people per square kilometer, we should be able to see hundreds of metropolitan areas in the United States (Reno, Nevada is at about 800 people per square kilometer), not to mention plenty of other places in the world.
An unintentional lie
Link: US Stream Names - Derek Watkins
This map is one of a trend of maps showing local terminology across the country, in this case the names of natural watercourses. Because of the high-contrast visual design, it's easy to assume that the blackout areas either have no corresponding data, or that they don't have one predominant nomenclature. This isn't true, though - buried as a footnote to the map description, the gray and black areas are where the terms "river" and "stream" are most common. This map has essentially removed from view the largest data points in favor of the more uncommon names. I think this was an unintentional result of the visual design, as this map would've been just as interesting.
A clear distortion of the truth
Link: A Texan's Map of the United States
Novelty maps often distort reality for comedic effect. This map does exactly that by enlarging the geography of Texas in relation to the rest of the U.S., mimicking the stereotype of the proud Texan's perception of non-Texan areas as inferior and/or physically smaller. The labels also reinforce stereotypical prejudices of Texans.
Abstract noise map
Link: Can you hear me now?
I made a choropleth to try to estimate the average noise level for a user's current location based on the population density of the corresponding U.S. county. While the link is tenuous at best, it abstracts the idea of distinct zones of noise that I think make sense to most people.
After the browser detects your current location, you will see a huge area of bright color (because of the high zoom level). You can compare this color to the scale in the legend at the bottom-right of the map to see how your location's noise "profile" stacks up against the rest of the country. I wanted to make the visual aspect as simple as possible and I think I at least succeeded on that level.
Here's an embedded version (for geolocation please visit the link at the top of this post):
A more personal mapping experience
There is a base level of service that all Google Maps experiences provide, but being signed into a Google account really changes the amount of information available to, and usable by, the user.
One of the obvious areas where personalization can be seen is during a search. Google indexes not only your contacts but your map history to provide the most relevant location results possible (this is why I always try to save my contacts' addresses).
Another way Maps can be tailored to your needs is the inclusion of calendar event information displayed on the map. If I have an appointment on the same day, and the location of the appointment (again, needs to be stored in the calendar event) lies within current map view, Maps will display a marker showing the appointment time and estimate of travel time. I couldn't get a screenshot because it seems to take a bit of time to index this information.
You can also explicitly tell Maps about your favorite locations, like Home and Work. Keeping this up to date ensures that Maps will always try to anticipate your commute across other services like Google Now.
The bottom line is: always save address so that Google Maps can make your life easier!
One of the obvious areas where personalization can be seen is during a search. Google indexes not only your contacts but your map history to provide the most relevant location results possible (this is why I always try to save my contacts' addresses).
Another way Maps can be tailored to your needs is the inclusion of calendar event information displayed on the map. If I have an appointment on the same day, and the location of the appointment (again, needs to be stored in the calendar event) lies within current map view, Maps will display a marker showing the appointment time and estimate of travel time. I couldn't get a screenshot because it seems to take a bit of time to index this information.
You can also explicitly tell Maps about your favorite locations, like Home and Work. Keeping this up to date ensures that Maps will always try to anticipate your commute across other services like Google Now.
The bottom line is: always save address so that Google Maps can make your life easier!
A map of noise for the rest of my day
Making a map for the "rest of my day" was complicated by the fact that I am stuck at home sick, so I focused my efforts on understanding the noise in my own living space.
First I identified the major noise generators: coffee grinder, air conditioning, television, alarm clock. Then I eyeballed a radius for each, based my own perceptions while living here. Finally, I color-coded their respective regions.
First I identified the major noise generators: coffee grinder, air conditioning, television, alarm clock. Then I eyeballed a radius for each, based my own perceptions while living here. Finally, I color-coded their respective regions.
The result is a cool-looking map that can support quite a few lies. I wanted this map to be as simple as possible so I sacrificed things like exact noise level, exact boundaries, exact measurements, and pretty much anything else that required me to leave bed.
One thing that I learned is that overlapping colors become very confusing. Originally I wanted the coffee grinder red to cover the entire apartment because the coffee grinder can be heard in all rooms. The problem was that you couldn't then tell where it started and ended, even with the red dot denoted the source of the noise. It just tinted all of the other colors red without any indication it was doing so.
Another thing became obvious in that you really need to decide ahead of time what you want to focus on. Do you treat each noise as a distinct sound? Or do you treat all noise equal and just focus on area? Or do you do both, but incorporate measurements of the noise levels to differentiate them? Or do you...
This was never meant to be a highly accurate map, but even making this inexact map made me think about exacting requirements for other mapping endeavors.
The lie and story of a Symap
A Symap is a map which uses the densities and shapes of typographical characters to convey scale data. They were commonly used in the heyday of typewriters and character-based printers which could print "graphics" by using contrasting ASCII characters.
My attempt at a Symap deals with NYC noise complaints per capita per borough, as seen below (full-screen version here):
There are a number of problems with this map. Though the characters are not nearly different enough to make a convincing story, the bigger issue is the per capita scale. The five boroughs vary greatly – 26 complaints per thousand residents in Manhattan versus less than 5 complaints per thousand residents on Staten Island, with Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx all somewhere in the middle.
Unless I am explicit in my terminology, I could unintentionally mislead you by showing a graphic derived from one calculation while you assume it comes from another. In this graph I used the borough populations so as to only compare the boroughs to themselves (e.g. 42,048 complaints divided among 1,626,159 residents in Manhattan gives the Manhattan per capita value). However, per capita often suggests a comparison to a whole (perhaps the entire city), espcially when the entire city is shown on the map. In this case, we would take 42,048 complaints and divide among 8,405,837 city residents, and get a different value.
My attempt at a Symap deals with NYC noise complaints per capita per borough, as seen below (full-screen version here):
There are a number of problems with this map. Though the characters are not nearly different enough to make a convincing story, the bigger issue is the per capita scale. The five boroughs vary greatly – 26 complaints per thousand residents in Manhattan versus less than 5 complaints per thousand residents on Staten Island, with Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx all somewhere in the middle.
Unless I am explicit in my terminology, I could unintentionally mislead you by showing a graphic derived from one calculation while you assume it comes from another. In this graph I used the borough populations so as to only compare the boroughs to themselves (e.g. 42,048 complaints divided among 1,626,159 residents in Manhattan gives the Manhattan per capita value). However, per capita often suggests a comparison to a whole (perhaps the entire city), espcially when the entire city is shown on the map. In this case, we would take 42,048 complaints and divide among 8,405,837 city residents, and get a different value.
| NOISE COMPLAINTS PER THOUSAND RESIDENTS | ||
|---|---|---|
| Borough | Borough- centric |
City- centric |
| Manhattan | 26 | 5 |
| Brooklyn | 10.5 | 3.3 |
| Queens | 6.3 | 1.7 |
| Bronx | 7.5 | 1.3 |
| Staten Island | 4.9 | 0.3 |
As seen in the table above, the choice of calculation can alter the "facts". Borough-centrically, the Bronx has more complaints per capita than Queens. But city-centrically, it is reversed. This data, once mapped, becomes the story.
Furthermore, we can simplify the story for the sake of a concise headline and say (in one case) that "the Bronx is noisier than Queens" without ever giving thought to what a noise complaint means. Does it mean that the Bronx is actually louder than Queens, or might it mean that Bronx residents are more inclined to complain, regardless of noise level?
This Symap is incredibly simple, but through analyzing the Lie and the Story we can see that there is an unbelievable amount of room for opinion, persuasion, and plain old error. Taking on larger and more complex mapping projects will require me to always question my methodology, even before the data makes it onto my map.
Fall 2014 courses
Building for Learning (Aidan Feldman)
The web has already revolutionized the way that people consume information, but only recently has it been taken seriously as an avenue for teaching. MOOCs, online tutorials, and interactive applications all offer different means of learning, from the highly structured to the exploratory. They raise new questions around evaluation and assessment, while providing new avenues for collaboration and opportunities for students outside of traditional learning environments. In this class, we will examine various educational platforms and tools, and get the opportunity to speak with their creators. What can we offer to teachers to make their lives easier? What features increase and sustain student engagement? The course will be largely project-based, where students will learn frontend web development skills to build new web-based learning experiences and tools.
Cloudcommuting: Rethinking Point-to-point Urban Mobility Systems (Dimitris Papanikolaou)
This course introduces the theory, underlying technologies, and operational challenges of intelligent mobility on demand (MoD) systems, using NYC City Bike sharing program as a living laboratory.
MoD systems utilize networks of parking stations and shared fleets of vehicles (bikes, scooters, automobiles) allowing users to make point-to-point trips on demand. Today, more than 650 bike sharing systems around the world mobilize 3 million trips every day while at least 200 additional systems are planned. Despite their seeming convenience and advanced technology, asymmetric trip patterns cause many stations to temporarily deplete from bikes while others from parking spaces decreasing reliability and level of service in the system. Operators spend their entire usage revenues paying gas, trucks, and workers to manually move bikes from full to empty stations. Yet, level of service is often low. In Paris 48% of users find no bikes and 58% of users find no parking spaces available. In Barcelona, 50% of the stations are either empty or full during 30% of the time.
In this course we will explore how information technology, social mechanism design, and game theory can be used to design the next generation of intelligent self-organizing MoD systems that motivate their own users to rebalance the fleet using price incentives. The course will combine lectures, readings, technical skill workshops, and a hands-on experimental project in a collaborative studio environment.
Frugal Innovation (Catherine Muther)
This course gives students conceptual and practical experience in developing ideas, tools, products and processes to augment and improve the lives of the global poor. We will use a variety of resources and methods to explore the emerging field of Frugal Innovation, beginning with an understanding of the context and constraints of living on less than $2.00 a day. Students will learn to identify key principles and challenges of designing for the Bottom of the Pyramid; for example, relentless pursuit of affordability. What are innovative models of using communications technologies to serve an illiterate market?
We will use Case Studies that address real life problems in emerging markets, particularly in healthcare and financial inclusion, where the use and potential of communications technologies is proliferating. Classes will feature cases of actual products or processes developed to solve a problem or meet a perceived need– some successful and others not. Why? How do we know what success looks like? We will look at metrics, methods and markets to explore the question of measuring impact. Entrepreneurs and field leaders will come to ITP as guests to share their knowledge and experience, and engage with students. Student teams will work on a project to create a frugal innovation for a critical challenge in the lives of the global poor.
Maps, Lies and Storytelling (Andrew Hill)
Maps have an incredible potential to do good and evil. Throughout history access to a map has been synonymous with power. In this course we will look at why that has been true, how it has changed through the digital revolution, and how we can harness mapping to gain power. The course will take a critical approach to maps and mapmaking, trying to pick apart all the ways they can be evil and be used to do evil. Through that critical approach, we will learn how to use maps effectively to communicate data, create knowledge, and tell stories. Students will also learn how maps are changing. We will try to find innovative new maps to create, both unassuming and controversial, and share those with a broader mapping community to create a public dialog. Students will learn the fundamentals of mapmaking, using tools from a pencil to Javascript, to create original maps from original data. We will create interactive maps with tools such as Leaflet and CartoDB to make maps from our imagination. We will also look at collecting or creating new geospatial data to make original maps never seen before.
Project Development Studio (Despina Papadopoulos)
This is an environment for students to work on their existing project ideas that may fall outside the topic areas of existing classes. It is basically like an independent study with more structure and the opportunity for peer learning. This particular studio is appropriate for projects in the area of interactive art, programing, physical computing and digital fabrication. There are required weekly meetings to share project development and obtain critique. Students must devise and then complete their own weekly assignments updating the class wiki regularly. They also must present to the class every few weeks. When topics of general interest emerge, a member of the class or the instructor takes class time to cover them in depth. The rest of the meeting time is spent in breakout sessions with students working individually or in groups of students working on related projects.
The web has already revolutionized the way that people consume information, but only recently has it been taken seriously as an avenue for teaching. MOOCs, online tutorials, and interactive applications all offer different means of learning, from the highly structured to the exploratory. They raise new questions around evaluation and assessment, while providing new avenues for collaboration and opportunities for students outside of traditional learning environments. In this class, we will examine various educational platforms and tools, and get the opportunity to speak with their creators. What can we offer to teachers to make their lives easier? What features increase and sustain student engagement? The course will be largely project-based, where students will learn frontend web development skills to build new web-based learning experiences and tools.
Cloudcommuting: Rethinking Point-to-point Urban Mobility Systems (Dimitris Papanikolaou)
This course introduces the theory, underlying technologies, and operational challenges of intelligent mobility on demand (MoD) systems, using NYC City Bike sharing program as a living laboratory.
MoD systems utilize networks of parking stations and shared fleets of vehicles (bikes, scooters, automobiles) allowing users to make point-to-point trips on demand. Today, more than 650 bike sharing systems around the world mobilize 3 million trips every day while at least 200 additional systems are planned. Despite their seeming convenience and advanced technology, asymmetric trip patterns cause many stations to temporarily deplete from bikes while others from parking spaces decreasing reliability and level of service in the system. Operators spend their entire usage revenues paying gas, trucks, and workers to manually move bikes from full to empty stations. Yet, level of service is often low. In Paris 48% of users find no bikes and 58% of users find no parking spaces available. In Barcelona, 50% of the stations are either empty or full during 30% of the time.
In this course we will explore how information technology, social mechanism design, and game theory can be used to design the next generation of intelligent self-organizing MoD systems that motivate their own users to rebalance the fleet using price incentives. The course will combine lectures, readings, technical skill workshops, and a hands-on experimental project in a collaborative studio environment.
Frugal Innovation (Catherine Muther)
This course gives students conceptual and practical experience in developing ideas, tools, products and processes to augment and improve the lives of the global poor. We will use a variety of resources and methods to explore the emerging field of Frugal Innovation, beginning with an understanding of the context and constraints of living on less than $2.00 a day. Students will learn to identify key principles and challenges of designing for the Bottom of the Pyramid; for example, relentless pursuit of affordability. What are innovative models of using communications technologies to serve an illiterate market?
We will use Case Studies that address real life problems in emerging markets, particularly in healthcare and financial inclusion, where the use and potential of communications technologies is proliferating. Classes will feature cases of actual products or processes developed to solve a problem or meet a perceived need– some successful and others not. Why? How do we know what success looks like? We will look at metrics, methods and markets to explore the question of measuring impact. Entrepreneurs and field leaders will come to ITP as guests to share their knowledge and experience, and engage with students. Student teams will work on a project to create a frugal innovation for a critical challenge in the lives of the global poor.
Maps, Lies and Storytelling (Andrew Hill)
Maps have an incredible potential to do good and evil. Throughout history access to a map has been synonymous with power. In this course we will look at why that has been true, how it has changed through the digital revolution, and how we can harness mapping to gain power. The course will take a critical approach to maps and mapmaking, trying to pick apart all the ways they can be evil and be used to do evil. Through that critical approach, we will learn how to use maps effectively to communicate data, create knowledge, and tell stories. Students will also learn how maps are changing. We will try to find innovative new maps to create, both unassuming and controversial, and share those with a broader mapping community to create a public dialog. Students will learn the fundamentals of mapmaking, using tools from a pencil to Javascript, to create original maps from original data. We will create interactive maps with tools such as Leaflet and CartoDB to make maps from our imagination. We will also look at collecting or creating new geospatial data to make original maps never seen before.
Project Development Studio (Despina Papadopoulos)
This is an environment for students to work on their existing project ideas that may fall outside the topic areas of existing classes. It is basically like an independent study with more structure and the opportunity for peer learning. This particular studio is appropriate for projects in the area of interactive art, programing, physical computing and digital fabrication. There are required weekly meetings to share project development and obtain critique. Students must devise and then complete their own weekly assignments updating the class wiki regularly. They also must present to the class every few weeks. When topics of general interest emerge, a member of the class or the instructor takes class time to cover them in depth. The rest of the meeting time is spent in breakout sessions with students working individually or in groups of students working on related projects.
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