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Conventional maps of election results can give a misleading picture of the popular support that candidates have because population is highly non-uniform, and equal areas on a map may not correspond to equal numbers of voters. Taking the example of the 2004 United States presidential election, we show how this problem can be corrected using a cartog...
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Citations
... Kartogram haritalama tekniğinde belirli bir mekânsal veriyi göstermek için kullanılan altlık (base) harita nicel bir veri ile ilişkili şekilde kasıtlı olarak bozulmaya uğratılır (Dent vd., 2009;Gastner, Shalizi & Newman, 2005;Reyes, 2014). Kartogramlar, amaca göre belirlenen istatiksel veri ile coğrafi alanın yeniden boyutlandırıldığı bir çeşit tematik harita olarak değerlendirilebilir (B.Şahin & Şahin, 2019) (Şekil 3-h). ...
İçinde yaşadığımız büyük veri çağında daha önce hiç olmadığı kadar büyük miktarda veri üretilmekte ve paylaşılmaktadır. Üretilen ve paylaşılan mekânsal veriler arttıkça tematik haritaların da önemi artmaktadır. Bu durumun temel nedeni herhangi bir verinin dağılışının oluşturduğu mekânsal örüntüyü en iyi yansıtabilecek görselleştirme aracının tematik haritalar oluşudur. Nitel ve nicel verileri haritalamak için farklı tematik haritalama yöntemleri kullanılmaktadır. Bu haritalama yöntemlerinin her birinin avantajlı ve dezavantajlı yönlerinin neler olduğu, hangi tip verilerin gösteriminde hangi tematik haritalama yöntemlerinin kullanılabileceği gibi temel kartografik becerilerin harita okuyucusu tarafından kazanılması son derece önemlidir. Bu becerilerin kazanılmasında ise ders kitapları büyük öneme sahiptir. Bu araştırmanın amacı ortaöğretim coğrafya ders kitaplarında yer alan tematik haritaların; ünitelere, haritalama yöntemlerine ve nitel/nicel veri durumuna göre dağılımı incelemektir. Araştırmada nitel araştırma yaklaşımları arasında yer alan doküman inceleme tercih edilmiştir. Araştırmanın veri kaynağını 2021-2022 eğitim-öğretim yılında 9, 10, 11 ve 12.sınıf seviyelerinde okutulan ortaöğretim coğrafya ders kitapları oluşturmaktadır. Eğitim Bilişim Ağı (EBA) üzerinden ulaşılan ders kitapları, araştırma için geliştirilen veri inceleme formu aracılığıyla betimsel içerik analizi kullanılarak incelenmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda ders kitaplarının yer alan tematik haritaların; ünitelere göre dağılımın son derece düzensiz olduğu, tematik haritaların büyük ölçüde korogromatik ve nokta sembol yöntemini içeren haritalardan oluştuğu ve nitel tematik harita sayısının nicel tematik haritalara göre oldukça az olduğu saptanmıştır.
... If colors represent categorical or quantitative data, it may be inevitable that neighboring regions are filled with the same color. For example, on the classic US presidential election cartogram [94], one variable (number of electors) is represented by area and the other variable (party affiliation of the electors) by a binary color scheme: red for Republican, blue for Democratic. On such cartograms, large contiguous swathes of states typically appear in the same color (e.g., the entire South is usually red, the Northeast blue). ...
Cartograms are map-based data visualizations in which the area of each map region is proportional to an associated numeric data value (e.g., population or gross domestic product). A cartogram is called contiguous if it conforms to this area principle while also keeping neighboring regions connected. Because of their distorted appearance, contiguous cartograms have been criticized as difficult to read. Some authors have suggested that cartograms may be more legible if they are accompanied by interactive features (e.g., animations, linked brushing, or infotips). We conducted an experiment to evaluate this claim. Participants had to perform visual analysis tasks with interactive and noninteractive contiguous cartograms. The task types covered various aspects of cartogram readability, ranging from elementary lookup tasks to synoptic tasks (i.e., tasks in which participants had to summarize high-level differences between two cartograms). Elementary tasks were carried out equally well with and without interactivity. Synoptic tasks, by contrast, were more difficult without interactive features. With access to interactivity, however, most participants answered even synoptic questions correctly. In a subsequent survey, participants rated the interactive features as "easy to use" and "helpful." Our study suggests that interactivity has the potential to make contiguous cartograms accessible even for those readers who are unfamiliar with interactive computer graphics or do not have a prior affinity to working with maps. Among the interactive features, animations had the strongest positive effect, so we recommend them as a minimum of interactivity when contiguous cartograms are displayed on a computer screen.
... If colors represent categorical or quantitative data, it may be inevitable that neighboring regions are filled with the same color. For example, on the classic US presidential election cartogram [94], one variable (number of electors) is represented by area and the other variable (party affiliation of the electors) by a binary color scheme: red for Republican, blue for Democratic. On such cartograms, large contiguous swathes of states typically appear in the same color (e.g., the entire South is usually red, the Northeast blue). ...
Cartograms are map-based data visualizations in which the area of each map region is proportional to an associated numeric data value (e.g., population or gross domestic product). A cartogram is called contiguous if it conforms to this area principle while also keeping neighboring regions connected. Because of their distorted appearance, contiguous cartograms have been criticized as difficult to read. Some authors have suggested that cartograms may be more legible if they are accompanied by interactive features (e.g., animations, linked brushing, or infotips). We conducted an experiment to evaluate this claim. Participants had to perform visual analysis tasks with interactive and noninteractive contiguous cartograms. The task types covered various aspects of cartogram readability, ranging from elementary lookup tasks to synoptic tasks (i.e., tasks in which participants had to summarize high-level differences between two cartograms). Elementary tasks were carried out equally well with and without interactivity. Synoptic tasks, by contrast, were more difficult without interactive features. With access to interactivity, however, most participants answered even synoptic questions correctly. In a subsequent survey, participants rated the interactive features as "easy to use" and "helpful." Our study suggests that interactivity has the potential to make contiguous cartograms accessible even for those readers who are unfamiliar with interactive computer graphics or do not have a prior affinity to working with maps. Among the interactive features, animations had the strongest positive effect, so we recommend them as a minimum of interactivity when contiguous cartograms are displayed on a computer screen.
... The political leaning of residents' is measured by the proportion voting for the Republican Party, a variable used in prior studies to gauge political context (Jenkins, Leicht, and Wendt 2006). Data for this variable (2004 presidential elections results) is provided by Gastner, Shalizi, and Newman 2005). We include two variables measured at the state level: state level neoliberal policy climate and regional historical political climate. ...
This study takes a new look at place development, analyzing the power of local business actors as compared to civic society and government in localities across the United States. We address the contested question of who controls place-making with a focus on growth control land-use policies. Theoretically, we draw from sociology’s growth machine framework to provide a comparative account of business actors and to speak to puzzling findings from this literature that policies ostensibly designed to stymie growth across places often promote it. Our study is based on more than 1,700 localities. We find that while business actors call the shots on economic development policy, they appear essentially apathetic about land-use policy. This suggests that land-use policies may be carefully designed to accommodate growth machine business interests. Local governments set the course for land-use as well as economic development policy, but civil society actors have relatively little influence.
... In the process of geographic statistics visualization, observers are more concerned with statistics related to regional extent, such as demographics (Forster et al., 1966), polls (Gastner et al., 2005), impact scope of hurricanes (Curtis et al., 2006), vegetation cover (Graser, 2012), and degree of traffic congestion (Ward et al., 2010), etc. One representative method is the coding method based on point symbols (Liu et al., 2013), as shown in Figure 2. The experimental results show that, for information with huge differences in density distribution, the point map, on one hand, suffers from large loss of information, and on the other hand, can result in huge waste of limited display space. ...
The human visual system can easily identify a variety of objects, all thanks to its powerful pattern recognition capability. One theory holds that the brain’s visual recognition mechanism is mainly achieved by single neurons and complex neurons located in area V1 of the cerebral cortex. Both types of cells decompose and synthesize the visual signals from sensory organs to extract their pattern features (Riesnhuber et al., 1991). However, in the information visualization field where logic is quite complicated, the visual recognition system of human beings has great limitations and can only effectively recognize complex visual patterns after the complex information is pretreated by a set of scientific visual coding methods. In the context of geographic statistics, based on the single neurons and complex neurons model and Gestalt psychology, this paper proposes a visual coding method based on aggregation and subdivision (AS method) to visualize geographic statistics. The simulation test results show that the AS method can deliver a good mapping relationship between geographic locations and a good rectangular aspect ratio and thus can achieve high visual perception efficiency.
... Introducing students to cartograms as a branch of GIS and mapmaking required particular attention to the idea of maps as malleable argumentative representations. That meant a short introduction using 2012 Presidential Election electoral maps to demonstrate a spectrum of cartogram alternatives to GIS maps (Gastner, Shalizi, & Newman, 2005;Newman, 2012). Students were first shown a geographically accurate map of the US and its electoral outcome, with states sending electoral votes to the Republican candidate in red and states sending electoral votes to the Democrat candidate in blue [ Figure 4, where red is light gray and blue is dark gray]. ...
Digital humanities is often presented as classroom savior, a narrative that competes against the idea that technology virtually guarantees student distraction. However, these arguments are often based on advocacy and anecdote, so we lack systematic research that explores the effect of digital-humanities tools and techniques such as text mining, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and network analysis have on learning outcomes. This study applies activity theory in a case study of a history classroom in order to understand how introducing digital-history methodology using analog tools like posters and whiteboards can improve student appropriation of history-specific disciplinary skills. The end goal is to provide clear direction for humanities instructors with varied access to technology as they seek to understand how digital humanities tools might still fit within the larger pedagogical practices of higher education classrooms and within the push toward digital methodologies in traditional humanities classrooms.
... Very close popular vote totals yield winner-take-all results, a fact of the US's electoral system but one that can lead to winner-take-all explanations. • The winner-take-all system means that the geography of voting patterns is often overly simplified, with states considered as homogeneous entities, leading to the ubiquitous red and blue maps popularized in 2000(Gastner et al., 2005. The geography of voting patterns are also often based on overly broad demographic/geographic categories, such as "suburban whites" which do not necessarily reflect an up-to-date picture of who lives where. ...
We combine fine-grained spatially referenced census data with the vote outcomes from the 2016 US presidential election. Using this dataset, we perform ecological inference using distribution regression (Flaxman et al, KDD 2015) with a multinomial-logit regression so as to model the vote outcome Trump, Clinton, Other / Didn't vote as a function of demographic and socioeconomic features. Ecological inference allows us to estimate "exit poll" style results like what was Trump's support among white women, but for entirely novel categories. We also perform exploratory data analysis to understand which census variables are predictive of voting for Trump, voting for Clinton, or not voting for either. All of our methods are implemented in python and R and are available online for replication.
... The South is used as a control variable due to the region's unique political history. We use the 2004 general elections because it is the most recent election preceding the 2008 National Association of Counties survey (elections data sourced from Gastner et al. 2005). ...
As localities increasingly confront challenging fiscal circumstances, how are they prioritizing the interests of business vis-a`-vis citizens’? While some scholars suggest an inverse relationship between localities’ developmental policies and social services provision, a zero-sum situation, others question this view. The second group of scholars suggest a positive-sum relationship where governments attend similarly to the interests of both business and citizens or where efforts devoted to business do not undermine social policy. Analyses of a national survey of county governments reveal support for both views, although the positive-sum hypothesis receives more affirmation. Counties are sustaining social safety nets even as they pursue business-friendly developmental policies.
... Since the first cartogram created by Raisz [40], which used rectangles to show distribution of various economic attributes of the United States in 1934, a great number of cartograms have been generated and applied to mapping different fields, such as census, election returns, and public health. Probably the most famous cartogram is the US election results designed by Gastner and colleagues [36,41]. The cartogram of the US election results outperforms the traditional choropleth maps in that the density-equalizing maps treat every vote with equal importance, resulting in a higher accuracy of the distribution of the two sides of the participant supporters. ...
This paper presents a new perspective of national power-sustainable national power (SNP)-emphasizing both the traditional comprehensive national power (CNP) and social and environmental sustainability. We propose a measurement to quantify the SNP based on the measurement of comprehensive national power and a sustainable adjusted index. In addition, density-equalizing maps are adopted to visualize the sustainable national power of countries in order to gain a better understanding for its current state and future development from a cartographic perspective. China and its neighboring countries are selected as a case study area. The results show that China outperforms other countries in most of the CNP dimensions but performs poorly in various SNP-adjusted dimensions within the study area. The composite score shows that China is with the highest regional SNP, followed by Japan, Russia, South Korea and India. Furthermore, time series of cartograms reveal evidence showing power transitions among countries. In addition, the effectiveness of cartograms for cartographic communication is discussed.
... Newman can produce cartograms with efficiency and topological integrity (Gastner and Newman 2004, Gastner et al. 2005, Dorling 2007). Although these two methods, particularly the diffusion algorithm, can produce quality cartograms free from topological errors, they have few procedures that are not controlled by the algorithms. ...
This article presents a fast, free-form rubber-sheet (Carto3F) algorithm for the construction of contiguous area cartograms. Rubber-sheet algorithms are influential and popular because of their conceptual simplicity. Existing rubber-sheet algorithms, however, tend to be algorithmically inefficient and computationally slow. More critically, they cannot completely preserve topology. Carto3F specifically improves rubber-sheet algorithms in these two aspects. First, with a spatial structure of quadtree and a mathematical condition for topological equivalence, Carto3F can prevent topological errors and guarantees topological integrity. Second, Carto3F is designed with efficiency as a priority. Its efficiency is primarily gained through using the auxiliary quadtree to reduce the number of points to be transformed. Furthermore, Carto3F allows parallel computation and can fully take advantage of the increasingly common multi-core, multi-thread processors. Based on the mathematical analysis, Carto3F also mitiga
