Yearly Archives: 2009

the first thematic maps

Below’s a quick outline of the first maps created with six common cartographic symbologies. All of the below is out there, in books, articles, and blog posts. Particularly helpful are Alan MacEachren’s 1979 article The Evolution of Thematic Cartography, Arthur Robinson’s Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography (1982), Borden Dent’s thematic cartography [...]

classed cartograms

Classification is commonplace in thematic cartography. In choropleth mapping, classification is the norm. This was not always so. The first choropleth map (created by Baron Charles Dupin in 1826) was unclassed.

According to Arthur Robinson, in his Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography:
So far as we now know, the [...]

visualizing MLB hit locations on a Google Map

Here’s a map of yesterday’s perfect game pitched by Mark Buehrle — only the 18th in MLB history. Highlighted is defensive replacement Dewayne Wise’s perfect game-saving catch over the wall in the 9th inning.

Here the same, as displayed by MLB’s Gameday, for which the initial pixel coordinates were collected.

The conversion from the pixel-based coordinates used [...]