another neat map

[juldea]

For those who, like me, dislike the "Red vs. Blue" mentality (unless we're referring to http://www.redvsblue.com )



Will put behind a cut if someone requests.

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

I am going to start referring everyone who posts this map to Tufte (http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=2-0961392142-3). Tufte is quite right when he says that color scales make it very hard to extract information.

I realize that doing this in grayscale would weaken the contrast with the strict red vs. blue, but things that look like they're meant to convey data and don't make me grind my teeth.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

This one doesn't convey data? I disagree. Although I do agree it could be shown better...

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Well, you can extract data from it. But the colors are flat in value (brightness), changing only along a hue scale, and hues don't convey information anywhere near as efficiently as values: you have to keep calibrating your brain against the supplied gradient. In grayscale, the information jumps out at you.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I get the same amount of information for this one... I'd want the scale to be changed, actually. We're never going to see 100% D or R... so why not set pure white and black at 75%? The contrast would be much more marked.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Sure, more contrast is better. I'm not very good at image-manipulation; I just found a ready-made filter that did approximately what I want.

I hear girls parse color better than boys; maybe that's why the color version seems useful to you and frustrating to me. (I'm not colorblind, but it does take conscious attention for me to distinguish similar colors.)

[juldea.livejournal.com]

girls parse color better than boys

Quite possibly. I do know that the purple map is useless to londo, who is actually colorblind.

Also, this explains why we have better fashion sense. ;)

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

(Also, DC was 90% Kerry. You wouldn't want to throw away that information by clipping too sharply.)

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Wow... didn't know. Craziness. Maybe something more, uh, logarithmic? Exponential?

[greyhame.livejournal.com]

I also find both maps equally useful. In fact, I think the colored one is slightly better, because the eye tends to skim over grayscale images and get caught by colored ones.

[mr-teem.livejournal.com]

DC went 90% Democratic.

[mr-teem.livejournal.com]

Well, you're right about Tufte, in the sense that if you try to extract quantitative information from this map, the color scale is disastrous. This map was intended to convey qualitative information as to relatively how red or blue any given state is. The county-breakdown color scale map that's floating around is even better for this. I wouldn't expect to see a map like this on CNN on election night, but it's a good post-mortem illustration, in my opinion.