Thursday, November 08, 2012

Man o Man o Schevist - NY Times Gives Great Map!

Let me just say that, as a Geography Major from UCLA, no one does better maps that the New York Times.
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Their maps convey information, trends and interesting data conveyed in a unique way.  They are (with a few others) rethinking the purpose of maps.  As we move to Tom-Toms and GoogleMaps, the need for maps as directions are becoming redundant.  We got around in Iceland without ever using a map, ion a city where the most basic words are difficult to understand.  (Ég tala ekki íslensku means I don't speak Icelandic).
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So this is a copy of their newspaper section today that shows, every county in American.  In it is:
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- What the margin of victory was in total (Winner's total minus loser's total) and by party (Red v blue).
- An arrow who's direction indicates it if got more Red or more Blue AND who's length shows by how many percentage points.
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What makes this so freakin' amazing, is that you don't really have to read an information key to get the gist of it.  That is some great map making.
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Select to increase size, but it is basically really easy to red even in Newsprint.  Kudos.