GGS 310 Final Project: Go Greek

Extra Credit: Top 10 Student Lab Maps

Top 5 Student Maps

Danielle did an excellent job on this map. The simple background color highlights the colors used within the state boundaries. Additionally, her use of font and spacing balance the map very well.

This map is so different from what most students created for this assignment. Thomas did a great job by creating the individual symbols and his placement of them made the map turn out fantastically.

This map is much more artistic than what most student created for this assigment. Jared used the river to set his legend for the proportional symbols, giving the map a much more creative feel.

Jillian's use of placement and spacing work great on this map. The colors on the map are even and the audience can easily distinguish between the different levels of data. Furthermore, her placement of Alaska and Hawaii help balance the map in a way that most students did not use.

This map by John is so interesting because of the data he is illustrating. By creating a patterned border, it gives the map a different, old-world feeling. Also, his placement and sizing of the dots illustrates the data properly. 

Top 5 Weekly Blog Maps

This map does a great job of illustrating the energy grid for the continents. By using such an interesting projection the audience can see how the more northern continents are connected, and how there is an obvious lack of energy used in Antarctica.

The use of color and lines to display the data for this map really grabs your attention. Also, by splitting up the map according to regions gives a sense of location and displays general grouping information that the audience may find useful.

This is such an interesting data set to display, and by using color and dot density the audience can see the distribution of the data. Additionally, this gives the audience a sense of region/culture according to the number of times an individual may kiss their friend while greeting them.

By using a choropleth map to show the levels of impact, the audience can understand the intensity of the path of super typhoon Haiyan. Also, the colors used are understood to be negative colors and illustrate the destruction that was caused.

This artistic map of the East Coast of the United States is very beautiful. The watercolor-like background gives a natural and peaceful feeling to the audience. Also, the symbols used help convey the national forests that are highlighted going down the map.

Final Project Proposal Presentation

Lab #10: Bivariate Map

Weekly Blog Post #9: Super Typhoon Haiyan

This is an interactive map of Tacloban in the Philippines. It specifically illustrates buildings that were totally affected, highly affected, and possibly affected buildings in this seaside town as a result of super typhoon Haiyan.

Link to image: http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/11/Red-Cross-Aerial-Map-Super-Typhoon-Haiyan-1-537x246.jpg

Link to interactive map: http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/americanredcross.map-ms6tihx6/page.html#14/11.2479/125.0025

Weekly Blog Map #8: Bivariate Map

link to website: http://turkowcfgeog.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/bivariate-map-roma-vs-under-18-populations-in-hungary/

link to image: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7023/6523047193_16fb0d1841.jpg

Lab #9: Dot Density Map

Final Project Proposal Presentation

For my final project, I plan on mapping something that is a little different from what the rest of the class will probably do. Since I am in a sorority I wanted to come up with a way that I could include my sorority in my final map project. Sororities have been growing largely in the last decade, and anywhere you go you can find prestigious, remarkable women who were once members of a sorority. For instance, 63% of all United States Cabinet members have been Greek. However, it is interesting that only 3% of the American population is part of a Greek organization.

This project is an opportunity to give a visualization of where and how many sorority chapters are from one region of the United States. Sororities around the country vary in size, so I wanted to focus only on the ten largest sororities according to number of chapters. There are twenty-six sororities total, with all different sizes, and honing in on the ten largest would be a good way to illustrate a snapshot of Greek life. Additionally, I would focus on the southern region of the United States where sororities are more popular than the rest of the country, in terms of size and number of chapters. The total number of states I will analyze will be fifteen and would include: Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Generally, these are the states that are understood as being part of “the South.”

These are the maps I wanted to base my idea off of:

For the data set, I think it will make the most sense to use either a proportional symbol map or a dot density map. This is due to most of the sororities all being at the same universities and locations. Furthermore, I am going to include a breakdown of George Mason sororities and other schools that have an interesting range of sororities.

The audience this will be geared towards will be the class and later members of Greek life who are interested in the makeup of the top sororities in one region of the United States.

To access this data, I will have to go through the top ten sororities’ websites to locate the number of chapters for each of the fifteen states. The data on these sites is very accurate, because they continuously update their chapter numbers when a new chapter is installed. I’ve already done this and this is what the breakdown looks like. Additionally, the basemap for this project will include the outlined fifteen states of the southern region of the United States.

Since I have already done the data collection part of the process I already have my project underway. Next, I will be working on exactly how I will want to display this data on the basemap to make it look as visually appealing as possible. Challenges I perceive to occur include possibly changing the data set depending on how the map creation process unfolds.

Extra Interesting Map

This is an interesting map I came across recently. It shows what each country contributes to the world. Just thought it was funny and interesting!

link to the image: http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2013-10/enhanced/webdr06/21/9/enhanced-buzz-wide-3486-1382362336-25.jpg

link to the article: http://www.buzzfeed.com/robinedds/this-map-showing-what-each-country-leads-the-world-in-is-rea

Weekly Blog Map #7: Dot Density

This dot density map illustrates which parts of the country that famous British musicians are from.

link to article: http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/gorgeous-music-map-of-the-uk

link to image: http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr02/2013/3/14/14/enhanced-buzz-wide-1496-1363285776-8.jpg

Weekly Blog Post #6: Isoline Map

link to image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BQpzxx7CYAAmGZx.jpg:large

link to article: http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/618-milk-the-drink-of-conquerors

Lab #8: Isoline Map of Smerg Levels in Virginia

Lab #7: Proportional Symbol Map

Lab #6: Color Choropleth Map

There were a few differences between my printed map and my online map. The background of my online map is a more mustard color, whereas on the printed map it turned out a bright yellow color. The color scheme, on both the printed and online maps, turned out about the same and the distribution changes are visible on both. But, the colors on the online map appear much sharper than my printed map. For this map, I prefer the online map over the printed map. This is because the online map has more depth in color than the printed map. The rust color scheme I chose was used to represent the pressure of unemployment on areas with higher percentages, and the lack of pressure on areas with lower percentages. This color scheme turned out much better than the grayscale color scheme, I believe, because it is easier to differentiate the steps in distribution. However, if I were to change this map I might have tried to change the color of the neat-line around the map, title, legend, Alaska, and Hawaii to white instead of black. But I like how this turned out!

Weekly Blog Post #5: Map with Color

Diversity of Languages Used on Twitter

Europe

Link: http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/539-vive-le-tweet-a-map-of-twitters-languages

Image Link: http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6224/6323180339_095a18e2a1_b.jpg

Lab #5: Choropleth Maps in Grayscale

Equal Interval Distribution

Natural Break Distribution

Weekly Blog Post #4: Geopopularity of Heavy Metal Bands

http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/560-a-world-map-of-heavy-metal-density

image: http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5461/7058834159_e038695f59_b.jpg

Weekly Blog Post #3: Typography

Link: http://myimaginarybrooklyn.tumblr.com/post/30399929084/1939-map-of-physics-being-a-map-of-physics

Image Link: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9hc6iAhrQ1rnav7ro1_500.jpg

Lab #4: Map of Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia

Lab #3: Harpers Ferry Map Replication

Lab #2: Mollweide Graticule Projection

Lab #1: Illustration of Sphere, Geoid, Ellipsoid, and Natural Surface of the Earth

Weekly Blog Post #2: Azimuthal Map Projection

This is a map projection that was featured on the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping website. The map projection used is an azimuthal projection, and this particular map projection gives the audience a better understanding of exactly how large the Artic Circle area is, with respect to Eurasia and North America. Furthermore, the azimuthal projection illustrates Greenland much larger than on any other map projection. This azimuthal projection of the Artic Circle creates a visual that tends to be overlooked in everyday maps.

Here is the link to the article: http://www.icsm.gov.au/mapping/map_projections.html

Here is the link to the image: http://www.icsm.gov.au/mapping/web_images/stereographic-arctic.jpg

The Geology of Glacier Bay

This is a map that illustrates the geologic characteristics of benthic habitats in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Although there are many different colors all over the map, they are useful to show how geologically significant Southeast Alaska is.

Here is a link to the article this illustration is presented in: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2006/1081/results.html

Here is a link to the individual image itself: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2006/1081/images/fig6.html