
Reasons to consider a cartogram - danso
https://medium.com/@joshuatauberer/how-that-map-you-saw-on-538-under-represents-minorities-by-half-and-other-reasons-to-consider-a-4a98f89cbbb1
======
danso
I shortened the headline because, well, it didn't fit...and also, I think
"silences minorities" is a little strong. If the 538 map [1] in question aimed
to argue something along the lines of, "Why do minorities have so much voting
power when they represent so little of the country?"...then sure. But
sometimes a standard choropleth is used when geopolitical boundaries and
distinctions are important. I'm not sure that they're particularly important
for "The Facebook Primary"...on the other hand, in the context of presidential
elections, geopolitical boundaries are generally more relevant to the
reader...because of the way presidents are decided via electoral college
rather than popular vote.

That said, I absolutely agree that awareness and practice of cartograms is
needed, as there are plenty of times when such geopolitical-agnostic
granularity is needed. But it's not just a tradeoff in difficulty in
production and design...cartograms are more abstract to the viewer, and the
more geopolitical data that you fuzz over, the more you might as well just
make a labeled bar chart...which also is an underused format these days,
because very few people will want to decorate their articles and essays with
bar charts when maps are just as easy to make.

[1] [http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/facebook-
primary/](http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/facebook-primary/)

~~~
Eridrus
I think labeled bar charts are worse than maps and cartograms for conveying
coarser grained information.

Bar charts beyond a single row are hard to compare because they use height
rather than colour and they don't say anything about the location (e.g. I
don't really know where wyoming is).

They also don't say anything about population size, which is what this article
is about. You could do some height + colour thing to get the same effect, but
then you're just building a crappy cartogram.

~~~
danso
> _You could do some height + colour thing to get the same effect, but then
> you 're just building a crappy cartogram._

Yeah, that's what I meant. The spectrum for a cartogram has total geographical
fidelity on one end, to total abstraction on the other. The latter would
basically be a bar chart in which the geographical data has been basically
ignored.

On the more abstract side, the Guardian did a radial chart for U.S. gay
rights...the positions around the circle corresponded roughly to regions, i.e.
"Northeast" is the top-right of the circle. Of course, it has all the problems
inherent to radial charts...but it's a nice example of something that _could_
be a bar chart (a horizontal array of blocks) that attempted to include some
geo-positioning data, even at a very general level:

[http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/10/data-
vi...](http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/10/data-
visualisation-us-gay-rights)

------
brandonmenc
> Maps of political sentiment give more space to the political right. Although
> Obama took just over 50% of the vote in the 2012 election, his voters
> account for only 38% of the space on a typical election map — making it look
> like his opponent should have won.

I don't recall encountering sour grapes from even the least educated
Republicans over the amount of the map colored red. Most people are aware of
population density. And they always show the total votes bar chart next to the
map.

> why [do] we keep drawing maps of land when it's the people we're interested
> in

Well, because America has states and electoral votes, so we really _are_ kind
of interested in land when talking about elections.

~~~
whybroke
So would you object to a map like this[1] because Alaska and Hawaii are not
geographically to scale with the other states? (Or in the correct geographic
position for that matter)

Clearly distorting those 2 states does not distort the information the map
conveys. So too with the other 48.

>...they always show the total votes bar chart next to the map...

I'm afraid not. Indeed the map I cited does not. Anyone glancing at it could
fairly likely think Red won when in fact Blue won by very large margin.
Actually it's hard to imagine a more confusing graphic.

[1][https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Electora...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/ElectoralCollege2012.svg)

~~~
brandonmenc
The full Wikipedia article you conveniently snipped the map from does in fact
show the popular vote in a bar chart:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012)

My point is the claim that these maps are being used to trick people, is
exaggerated. Why? Because it's rare that the popular vote tally is not shown,
and most people are aware of population density.

I think that having as many different views as possible on the data is a great
thing, and the maps in this article are excellent. However, because of the
Electoral College, the standard map is not useless, and in fact shows you
something no other map can - where a state is located along with how it voted
in the election, projection distortions notwithstanding.

~~~
whybroke
>most people are aware of population density

Half of Americans can not find New York on a map. Half can not find
Mississippi. Most believe Alaska is more populous than any New England state
etc.

>...they always show the total votes bar chart next to the map...

That image is used in at least 4000 places on the web[1]. Very few include the
the vote bar you claim is always there. Even MIT omits it [2]

>I don't recall encountering sour grapes from even the least educated
Republicans over the amount of the map colored red

And I have encountered quite a bit. Seems the people we happen to bump into at
random are different.

>My point is the claim that these maps are being used to trick people, is
exaggerated

Claiming that it is intentionally tricking people would be exaggerated.
Claiming that it is incidental misleading people is spot on.

>the standard map is not useless

It is not completely useless. But is so nearly so that it clearly should not
be the default means of presenting the information to the public.

[1][http://tineye.com/search/cdf0747ebb6fe87c0cc0f1dc1f21a35502b...](http://tineye.com/search/cdf0747ebb6fe87c0cc0f1dc1f21a35502b6007f/)
[2][http://news.mit.edu/2012/presidential-election-
conference-10...](http://news.mit.edu/2012/presidential-election-
conference-1023)

~~~
brandonmenc
I don't necessarily disagree with you.

Burning karma here but, imo, if someone can't find New York on a map they
probably shouldn't even be allowed to vote for the President.

~~~
whybroke
Quit possibly. But pushing the hypothetical further: simply depriving ignorant
people of the vote, aside from possible justice issues, would certainly result
in social instability. (not to mention the undoubtable drag on the economy
that ignorance represents)

Better would be to see to it that everyone knows where New York is. And better
still that everyone were indeed well informed enough not to be deluded by the
map style we're talking about.

Given, unfortunately, that we do live in a world with a fair level of
ignorance, we should probably take that into account when presenting
information. Certainly there are cynical people who are all too aware of how
to do so for negative ends. Or, as I think in this case, designers quickly
putting together a pretty graphic for TV simply by following a graphic formula
that isn't remotely the best.

------
Symbiote
Does anyone have any nice examples, other than the UK parliamentary seats map?
It's widely used in the UK, but it's also perhaps the only decent cartogram
I've seen.

Edit: Here's a reasonable one for the USA:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Cartogra...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Cartogram-2008_Electoral_Vote.png)

And an interactive version of the UK one:
[http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-
interactive/2015/may/...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-
interactive/2015/may/07/live-uk-election-results-in-full)

~~~
joshdata
Hey. I'm the author of the article.

If folks want to toss links to good examples of cartograms in replies here,
I'll add them to the article!

~~~
yeshihello
Why would you choose the 538 map to pick on when it's one of the few maps of
this kind that actually allows you to zoom in on each area? That's as good a
solution to the problem you're referring to as cartograms are. If not better.

Maps will always have inherent demographic bias, that's just how it is. And,
sure, anyone who makes maps should be always looking for good solutions to
these issues. But a smug Medium article proposing the use of cartograms, as if
that's a new idea, doesn't help anyone. Except perhaps you, the author, if
you're looking for some kind of attention or recognition.

~~~
joshdata
> Why would you choose the 538 map to pick on

It was a convenient example. And I hadn't noticed the interactivity before
writing the article. That said, I don't think the zoom function makes it much
better.

If you think it's OK to routinely portray America as being only rural white
America, and if you're not interested in knowing in a quantified way how
different a map is from reality, then we live in different worlds. As I said
at the top of the article, the point wasn't _that_ there is a bias (because
that's no surprise to anyone) but to find out how large that bias is.

------
DanielBMarkham
This is a thesis without any supporting arguments.

tl;dr the thesis is _Maps could be a reason policymakers don’t focus on
minority issues_

The American system of government is based on a bicameral system. That is,
half of the legislative function (making new laws) is handled by a
representation of the _people_ , the other half by a representation of the
_land area_.

This is by design. It is not a bug. The system is not a true democracy and
while paying attention to minorities is important in any republic, it is not
the only consideration. The reason land mass was called out was because the
states establish and form the U.S., but I guess if you had to do it over again
you could assign power to people with lots of money. The point being a
legislative body representative of the existing system (and responsible for
the architecture, not just the performance of government) was desired.

But none of that was in there. Neither was there much proof that maps cause
harm to minorities. Both of these things should have been addressed for the
essay to be worth much, sadly. Nice graphs though.

------
muglug
While I agree that cartograms beat standard maps for showing people-centric
data, picking on FiveThirtyEight (which has done so much to de-obfuscate the
American political system) seems a little silly.

> Maps could be a reason policymakers don’t focus on minority issues.

Well it could, but other factors (such racism as gerrymandering) play a
definitive role in influencing policymakers and the constituents they answer
to.

~~~
pmorici
The other thing that goes unmentioned here is that congress works on both a
representation by population (house of representatives) and a representation
by state irrespective of population (Senate). In the case of issues the senate
has a say in, every state has an equal say regardless of population so in that
case it wouldn't be appropriate to size a visual by population.

