Final Project

Ha! My final project is finished along with the willpower to accomplish any more schoolwork for the next few weeks. I decided to map the increases and decreases in motorcycle registrations across the U.S. because as a motorcyclist, I'm curious about the growth or decline of the motorcycle industry. Overall, it appears to be growing quite a bit. The only trouble in making the map came from Colorado's motorcycle registration numbers for 2002-2006, which included duplicate numbers of registrations from one year to the next and jumps of almost 100,000 between other years. Since both of these scenarios seem rather unlikely, I decided to substitute the more realistic 1996-2000 data in for Colorado and made note of the switch on the map.

Here are some useful links, should one like to learn more on the subject or just waste some time:

Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/


Motorcycle Safety Foundation
http://www.msf-usa.org/


Motorcycle USA
http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/


Visordown
http://www.visordown.com/


DC Sportbikes
http://www.dcsportbikes.net/

Lab 10: Bivariate Map

Well, it's the last lab of the semester. Since it depicts two data sets on the same map, it pretty much took twice as long to produce. I spent a considerable amount of time choosing which data sets to use, seeing as they must be suitable for each mapping method - in this case choropleth and graduated symbols.

Lab 9: Color Choropleth Map

When comparing the web version of this map to the printed version, it becomes evident that some colors can appear rather different, depending on which version one happens to be looking at. The blue background on the printed version is noticeably darker than it appears on the computer moniter. This makes the map scales somewhat obscured, although they are not terribly difficult to read. On the other hand, the difference between the class colors is more evident on the printed version, so there are some definite trade offs.

Lab 8: Proportional Symbols

The task for Lab 8 was to create a proportional symbol map. The symbols in this map are cowbells, representing the number of cattle and calves sold in the state of Maryland in 1997. Small technical problems with Adobe Illustrator came together to make it rather difficult to create a convincing cowbell symbol and provided for a frustrating experience in general. On the other hand, I spent some time working with the dropshadow effect around the map and legend and feel as though the effect gives the map a little something extra.

Map of the Week

This week's topic was color, so here's a colorful antique map. I like how the value of the colors increases toward the edges of the continent boundaries. The picture also makes for a great wallpaper!

Map of the Week

Proportional symbol maps like the one here are great for showing degrees of magnitude. In this case, the subject is city size. Although there isn't a legend, one can safely assume that larger circles mean larger cities. The transparent nature of the circles was a nice idea since it helps to avoid obscuring other parts of the map.

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.