{"id":346,"date":"2012-03-05T19:06:36","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T19:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=346"},"modified":"2012-03-05T19:06:36","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T19:06:36","slug":"creating-data-maps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=346","title":{"rendered":"Creating Data Maps"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are several online tools for data visualization including IBM’s ManyEyes<\/a> and Google’s Chart Tools<\/a>. For a recent post<\/a> on the other blog<\/a> to which I contribute I wanted to map the distribution of a variable on a geographical map of Europe. I decided that’s a good opportunity to try a site called Target Map<\/a> which promises free, high-quality, customizable data maps. The result of my efforts can be seen below:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The link to the map is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Altogether, I can’t say that I am too happy with the mapping utility. My main quibble is that there are no default color palettes that translate well continuous variables into color hues. By default, the program offers highly contrasting color choices for the different categories but ones that don’t suggest the ranking of categories. And I couldn’t find an easy way to customize the color palette.<\/p>\n

Data entry is OK, although once you select Europe as the geographical scope of your data, you can’t have any values for Turkey, for example, even if you try to supply them manually. Altogether, Target Map might be useful for some very small and inconsequential projects but for serious staff one should bite the bullet and get familiar with R’s map utilities (something I have been planning to do for a while).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are several online tools for data visualization including IBM’s ManyEyes and Google’s Chart Tools. For a recent post on the other blog to which I contribute I wanted to map the distribution of a variable on a geographical map of Europe. I decided that’s a good opportunity to try a site called Target Map which promises free, high-quality, customizable data maps. The result of my efforts can be seen below: The link to the map is here. Altogether, I can’t say that I am too happy with the mapping utility. My main quibble is that there are no default color palettes that translate well continuous variables into color hues. By default, the program offers highly contrasting color choices for the different categories but ones that don’t suggest the ranking of categories. And I couldn’t find an easy way to customize the color palette. Data entry is OK, although once you select Europe as the geographical scope of your data, you can’t have any values for Turkey, for example, even if you try to supply them manually. Altogether, Target Map might be useful for some very small and inconsequential projects but for serious staff one should bite the bullet and get familiar with R’s map utilities (something I have been planning to do for a while).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[161,162,163,398,633],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-5A","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":377,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=377","url_meta":{"origin":346,"position":0},"title":"Visualizing left-right government positions","date":"March 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"How does the political landscape of Europe change over time? One way to approach this question is to map the socio-economic left-right positions of the governments in power. So let's plot the changing ideological \u00a0positions of the governments using data from the Manifesto project! As you will see below, this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Data visualization"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/rplot2.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":948,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=948","url_meta":{"origin":346,"position":1},"title":"Books on data visualization","date":"November 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is a compilation of new and classic books on data visualization: \u00a0 Scott Murray (2017)\u00a0Interactive Data Visualization for the Web\u00a0[amazon asin=1491921285&template=add to cart] Elijah Meeks (2017)\u00a0D3.Js in Action: Data Visualization with JavaScript\u00a0[amazon asin=1617294489&template=add to cart] Alberto Cairo (2016)\u00a0The Truthful Art: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication\u00a0[amazon asin=0321934075&template=add to cart]\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Data visualization"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":496,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=496","url_meta":{"origin":346,"position":2},"title":"Scatterplots vs. regression tables (Economics professors edition)","date":"July 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I have always considered scatterplots to be the best available device to show relationships between variables. But it must be even better to have the regression table and a full description of the results in addition, right? Not so fast: A new paper shows that\u00a0professional economists make largely correct inferences\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Data visualization"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":647,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=647","url_meta":{"origin":346,"position":3},"title":"New data source for political science researchers","date":"December 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Political Data Yearbook Interactive\u00a0is a new source for data on election results, turnout and government composition for all EU and some non-European countries. It is basically an online version of the yearbooks that ECPR printed as part of the European Journal for Political Research for many years now. 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Photo by\u00a0Alessandro\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Data visualization"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/dynamic-asylum-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":547,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=547","url_meta":{"origin":346,"position":5},"title":"Network visualization in R with the igraph package","date":"November 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In this post I showed a visualization of the organizational network of my department. Since several people asked for details how the plot has been produced, I will provide the code and some extensions below. The plot has been done entirely in R (2.14.01) with the help of the igraph\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Data visualization"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/org_network2.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}