Maps
bioephemera | May 10, 2009
We all know some cities "feel" smaller than others. But this set of subway maps presented at the same scale makes the differences obvious.
Just for fun, I made this image layering four of maps from major world cities in red, black, gold, and blue. Recognize the cities? Answer after the fold. . .
Sizewise, the winner here is London, shown in red. New York, in black, is a close second. The much less complex gold-green pattern is Washington, DC - note that it only approaches the size of New York and London because of the long spindly commuter line reaching north into Maryland. And that dense…
bioephemera | May 3, 2009
Some Kansas State University geographers have come up with some interesting maps of the US that purport to show the national distribution of the seven deadly sins. Obviously they can't gauge "sinfulness" directly, so they're using proxy data - such as STD infection rate to measure lust (above).
It's a fun thought exercise to assess the pros and cons of the various methodologies for measuring each sin. Consider greed, which was (as described in the Las Vegas Sun) calculated by comparing average incomes with the total number of inhabitants living beneath the poverty line. How does that…
ddobbs | April 28, 2009Leave it to Vaughn Bell to find this stuff: emotional maps of different cities. Got to get a hold of this -- and as Vaughn explains, you and I can, with free download. (But leave the author some $. It's the right thing to do.)
Nold came up with the idea of fusing a GSR machine, a skin conductance monitor that measures arousal, and a GPS machine, to allow stress to be mapped to particular places. He then gets people to walk round and creates maps detailing high arousal areas of cities.
The biomapping website has some of the fantastic maps from the project.
His book, called Emotional…
bioephemera | March 30, 2009
SEEDmagazine.com interviews Carl Bergstrom, whose eigenfactor project uses citation databases to map networks of information sharing within science:
We find papers to read by following citation trails. If you have an eigenfactor of 1.5, it means 1.5% of the time, a researcher following citation trails is actually trying to get an article from your journal. . . How do you make the right connections, right? How do you make the critical connections to move thought forward? If you can solve a problem like that, or even just make a little contribution to it, it really accelerates science in a…
mikethemadbiologist | November 13, 2008At the Washington Independent, Aaron Wiener has made a bunch of electoral college maps that show how the candidates would have done if only one particular demographic group had voted. First, registered independents:
Now, self-described moderates:
Not good for the GOP at all. But we're a center-right country! Erm....
Onto college graduates:
With the exceptions of Florida and Indiana, this looks exactly like the actual 2008 map. As I'll discuss tomorrow, you can't really win anymore without college graduates. Demonizing educated people who like science and stuff might not be the best…
mikethemadbiologist | January 12, 2008Whether or not you like maps, if you're in Boston, you should see this exhibit.
The Boston Public Library's Norman B. Leventhal Map Center has an incredible exhibit of New England maps, "Boston and Beyond: A Bird's Eye View of New England." All of the maps are realistic in that every street and building is actually drawn for a bunch of New England towns (the exhibit focuses on Boston, but most major New England cities are covered). It's remarkable to see the pre-'fill-in' maps of Boston: I figure I live what was once about 200 yards offshore.
It's a nice weekend (for Boston in January).…
cevans | December 5, 2007
I'm surprised that I haven't come across this before: a Google-maps rendering of UFO sightings in the US, dynamically updated as-it-happens. Preliminary perusal seems to indicate that UFOs tend to stay away from the landlocked mountains, preferring to pop by the Pacific Northwest, the California coastline, and, in droves, the East Coast and the area immediately around the Great Lakes. For those of us who "believe" that even a fraction of these sightings may be the real deal, this map is an interesting asset and may tell us some valuable things about our visitors; for those of us who don't,…