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November 11, 2004
How to Say 48 - 51
There’s a county by county election results map that has been alternately encouraging and bothering people because uses right figures to tell a wrong thing. If you wanted Bush to be president, you might think, “Now that’s MY America.” If you wanted Kerry, that’s not your America. If you take the area literally, the map says 83% of the people love George Bush, and 17% are extremist Kerry wackos.
The need to see a map that says “48-51” (or even better “51-48”) instead of “17-83” is intense. The problem is, nothing says 48% - 51% like a pie chart, and a map is not a pie chart. So these fellows at the University of Michigan have made a map to solve that problem. Now everyone can agree, it doesn’t look like America.
The problem with the county map is not area, or area of color, or shade of red to purple. It’s the intensity of the color that implies an even distribution of the population. I really think if they would adjust the brightness of the color to reflect population, instead of the area, they would get a more accurate graphic. And you could find Tennessee on it.
So, in conclusion…
Posted by dme at November 11, 2004 05:51 PM
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