Creating Effective Cartograms
Friday, December 19th, 2008
A Standard 2008 Election Map (Upper), and a Cartogram skewed by Population (Lower)
Cartograms, or visualizations of an area skewed by some variable, are a powerful tool to control for disparities over a large area, especially with respect to politics.
A relatively large but sparsely populated area will dominate a standard projection, whereas a cartogram allows populated areas to be warped to show their true influence (See sidebar).
Applications of Cartograms:
Socio-economic data is the most obvious use case for cartograms, particularly data from the United Nations and National Elections.
