Cartograms

Cartograms are a useful and intuitive way to visualize statistical data about a set of regions like countries, states, or provinces. The size of a region in a cartogram corresponds to a particular geographic variable. The most common variable is population: in a population cartogram, the sizes (measured in area) of the regions are proportional to their population. Since the sizes of the regions are not their true sizes they generally cannot keep both their shape and their adjacencies. This cartogram, which is the second picture is a representation of the electoral college’s outcome after the 2004 presidential election. As you can see the top map looks one-sided, but when you use a cartogram it shows that it really wasn’t that one sided at all.