
Mapping the Census: A Dot for Every Person - japhyr
http://theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/12/mapping-census-dot-every-person/4273/
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bwooce
Neat. I've often thought about setting up an installation with one pixel per
person...in the world.

With HDTV's it's not too extravagant either - about 3345 panels. A lot (of
drivers too) but doable.

Any support for it? I was thinking that a circular dome ring of panels would
be an amazing visualization tool.

Ideas: 1\. current age of every person, represented by color 2\. Language 3\.
Religion 4\. State (health, nourishment, etc)

But then I run out - but I think it would be an incredible tool for a variety
of data sets.

You could start smaller too (country level)

Has anyone done this yet? I'm aware there are no new ideas on the Internet.

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leephillips
"I've often thought about setting up an installation with one pixel per
person"

The problem with this kind of simple scatterplot is that there is an maximum
density that you can represent, when the dots start to overlap. And you can't
tell what that maximum density is by looking at the map, so it in effect
misrepresents the data. The example in the article compensates for this by
allowing zooming, but the problem is still there at most zoom levels. To avoid
this you need to use one of the techniques that tessellates the plane and
colors each tile according to the average value in the tile.

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Thrymr
I read bwooce's comment to mean one pixel per person literally (not in map
projection). If you're not trying to represent geography at the same time you
don't have that problem. You could still sort the data representing
individuals by two variables if you want, e.g. latitude and longitude, and map
them to x and y, but it wouldn't be a map.

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leephillips
You're right, I should have read the comment more carefully. An interesting
idea! So please take my comment as applying to the article rather than
bwooce's comment.

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oofabz
I was hoping for a downloadable single-image version but he doesn't have one.
I made one myself by compositing his tiles.

Image: <http://frammish.org/dots.png>

Code: <http://pastie.org/5602534>

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reddit_clone
Your first link crashed my Safari Browser.

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sp332
It caused a spike in Firefox's memory usage of over 1 extra gigabyte.

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mixmastamyk
Minneapolis looks a lot larger than I'd have guessed.

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ars
The pattern of dots connecting larger cities in the middle of the country is
really impressive - and a bit suspicious how straight the lines are.

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japhyr
Have you traveled that part of the country? There are large areas where every
road is east-west or north-south, and the towns are evenly spaced for very
long distances. I don't see anything suspicious about it at all. Is there
something I'm missing?

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Stratoscope
Sounds right to me. Here's an example:

[https://maps.google.com/?ll=39.505841,-95.443857&spn=0.4...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=39.505841,-95.443857&spn=0.474159,0.971603&t=u&z=11)

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_delirium
There's some information on the origins of those remarkably regular (and
recursive) grid roads in this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System>

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CKKim
The increasingly magnified images remind me of playing with fractal-viewing
programs, with one major difference: here the zooming in leads to distinct
patterns at specific resolutions, rather than repetition of one at a different
scale. Once you get to the clearly visible "blocks" of Detroit and LA you're
learning something completely different. Fascinating.

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lylemckeany
I like how you can toggle between the normal Google map and the census dots.
It's fun to try to guess what the large white spots are in areas I'm familiar
with, such as the Crystal Springs Reservoir near San Mateo, CA.

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sputknick
I zoomed in on my neighborhood. My question is... I live on the edge of a
national park, and I see a number of dots (roughly 50) within that national
park. How is that possible?

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LoganCale
Same, I live near a National Forest boundary and it's showing a substantial
number of dots inside that boundary in places where there are most definitely
no homes. There are occasional chunks of private land within the boundary, but
not where these dots are showing—they are, in fact, often within a designated
wilderness boundary which allows no permanent residents or active buildings.

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Thrymr
The dots are not placed to exact addresses, but roughly evenly distributed
within census blocks. The number inside the block should be correct, not the
exact placement.

