Map 5 Critique

Above is a map of the Upper Cormorant Lake shed in MN.  Unfortunately, from this map that cannot be determined due to the lack of any title.  The map does include a north arrow and a scale, but lacks and indication of where the data was obtained from.  The visual hierarchy of this map is skewed towards the legend, which takes away from the importance of the actual data.  Overall, the data is clear and text is legible.

source: http://rmbel.info/consulting/gis-mapping/

map 4 critique

Above is a map of the number of Physicians per 10,000 population by county in the year 2000.  One drawback of this maps is the lack of any scale or north arrow.  The map is very legible and clear, and has a good level of visual hierarchy.  However, it may have been best to make the background a different color than white because some of the data is also represented by the color.  However, the figure ground is still sufficient due to the distinct county lines that distinguish the map from the background.  It is also unclear what "Missouri = 22" means.

map 3 critique

Above is a map of the Texas River Basins and Major Bays.  One main drawback of this maps is the enormous number of colors used to represent the data.  It may have been better to provide some other method of distinction in addition to the use of colors.  This may include adding numbers to the areas, or even patterns/textures.  In addition, the map is heavier on the left where the keys reside.  Aside from that, clarity, legibility, and visual hierarchy are good.

source: http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/landwater/land/maps/gis/map_downloads/map_gallery/hydro/

Map 2 critique

This map displays the annual direct (perpendicular to the land area) solar radiation received by a particular area in the United States.  This map makes great use of its color scheme, getting darker as you approach areas with higher levels of radiation and lighter as you approach areas of less direct solar radiation. This map is well balanced, and is very clear and legible.  The only aspect missing is a scale, but may not be necessary due to the data being map.  Visual hierarchy is also adequate and emphasis is placed on data.

Source: http://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html

Map 1 Critique

The above map represents the Percent Population with below Poverty Status (2009) in the City of Gainseville, Flordia.  One issue with this map is the color scheme.  Qualitative schemes, like the one used, are best suited to represent nominal or categorical data, not to imply magnitude differences between legend classes.  A sequential scheme with one or two hues would have been more effective at representing the data. Another issue with this map is that it lack any sort of scale.  Furthermore, the title to the map is not centered, and could be created larger in order to stand out more.

source: http://mch.peds.ufl.edu/gis_maps/gainesville.html

Bivariate Map

The purpose of this project was to map two variables on a single map.  In my project, I added a variable to my proportional symbol map using choropleth techniques to represent the total population in poverty.  This map compares the percent of each county population in poverty to the total general population of each county.  This comparison is important because it displays the poverty density of each county in Wisconsin.  Without the general population data, Menominee County would appear to have the greatest number of people in poverty, when in reality it is Milwaukee County.  Trends on this map show that there are larger numbers of people in poverty in the urban southeast edge of Wisconsin, but higher percent population in poverty in the lower populated, rural counties in the north. 

One struggle that I faced when creating this map was positioning the legends, map, and title so that one side of the map would be balanced with the other.

Colors were selected using Colorbrewer, and data was taken from the U.S census Bureau.

Proportional Symbol Map

The purpose of this activity was to introduce manual proportional symbol mapping with Microsoft Excel and Adobe Illustrator CS5.

Requirements 

- The map must contain at least 30 geographic units (countries, counties, cities, etc.)

 Data was collected from the U.S Census Bureau and then sorted from highest to lowest values.   By using the largest percentage value as the largest proportional symbol, I was then able to appropriately size the other percentages as fractions of the largest circle.  The major struggle of this assignment was manually sizing the symbols in Illustrator.  This was an easy task, but rather time consuming.  I chose to map poverty data in Wisconsin because I feel that it often gets overlooked.  People often believe that the majority of poverty exists only in third world countries or large cities, but this map shows that Poverty exists everywhere no matter where you live.   I chose to use percentages as my data because I feel gives a better visual representation of the data.  Counties such as Milwaukee County that have large populations sizes are naturally going to have larger numbers of people in poverty.  That value is meaningless unless you are able to compare that number to the total population size.


Discussion:  This map provides excellent visual hierarchy, clarity, legibility, and figure ground.  The only draw back would be that the use of percents instead of actual number of people resulted in a smaller range of circle sizes.  This results in a slight reduction in clarity, yet still reasonable.