Lab 7: Choropleth

Lab 7 calls for the creation of two choropleth maps, each having a different classification scheme for how the data is depicted. In this case, the original data set (the percent of housing units in each state built in 2005 or later) appeared to suit itself very well to both natural breaks and equal intervals. In fact, it happened that both schemes came out so close that only Utah is changed. It would have been interesting to have more of a difference between the two maps, but I felt as though equal intervals and natural breaks divided the data fairly evenly and made for sensible looking maps.

Choropleth Maps

Here are three examples of choropleth maps tracing blood type prevalence around the world. One can make some generalizations about blood type concentrations, but it's clear that there are quite a few exceptions. So now, when you see a blood donation service taking place on campus, you might think of these maps!

Lab 6: Dots

Lab 6 calls for lots and lots of dots (1,631 in my case). The procedure for this map was time consuming but pretty straightforward. Since I was mapping houses, I tried to concentrate the dots around population centers. Because the houses being mapped here were all built before 1940, population statistics for pre-1940s West Virginia would have provided for added accuracy, but I felt that given the time alloted for this lab and the lab's more tutorial purpose, using current city locations would suffice. Lastly, I didn't encounter the technical troubles with Illustrator that plagued my last lab.

Lab 5

Well, I had some trouble with AI on this one in terms of the boxes around two of the layers, which can be seen as the light gray lines that look as though they don't quite belong. Other than that, creating a map from scratch was neat.

VA, DC, MD Bicycle Paths!

Here's a neat and handy interactive map of bike trails and lanes all around the DC area: http://mooniker.net/capitalbikeways/ You can also check out things like bike shop locations and reported incidents along bike paths.