From the course: Creating Maps with R
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Cartograms: Distorted area maps
From the course: Creating Maps with R
Cartograms: Distorted area maps
- [Instructor] This is a cartogram. Cartograms are really interesting and attention-grabbing maps. In these charts, the areas of regions are distorted to communicate a continuous variable. We need just two things to make cartograms, shape files for the regions, and an algorithm for distorting region size. I've actually shown you rare version of a cartogram. I've created a hybrid between a cartogram and a choropleth where fill color encodes the same information as the area distortion. But usually, cartograms will be shown without legend or fill color. There's also an alternative cartogram algorithm where regions are proportionally shrunk instead of grown. So why would we go and use a fancy algorithm to create a cartogram instead of using a normal choropleth? Cartograms do a good job of highlighting small regions with comparatively large values, which could be difficult to spot in choropleth. But the most important property…
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