Talk:Cartogram

Is there an easy-to-use Cartogram-creating program that Wikipedians can use to create maps without complicated fair use issues? There are certainly some cartogram generators online, but none apparently easy enough for me to use. (I'm dumb by the way.) --- Rogsheng (talk) 07:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

I've just started using Mapresso, it took me about 4 hours to get from a list of countries and weights to distorted maps. I admit it is not exactly the easy to use but its not bad. (I'm not to sharp either.) Seo01 (talk) 14:05, 27 March 2008 (UTC)Reply

There is ScapeToad.--78.48.41.130 (talk) 15:48, 17 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

How about including Borden D. Dent in the bibliography? --131.155.68.6 13:14, 12 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

How about using one of these cartograms for the US election instead?. They're generated by a different algorithm, and appear to be visually more understandable. The currently displayed image isn't bad, but it somewhat looks like it's filled with bubbles.

Because there's no explicitly open license? --Belg4mit 19:06, 7 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

The claim that "cartogram" does not refer to any statisitical map seems highly suspect. Webster's 7th says,

 a map showing statistics geographically

, which could be taken either way. The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 gives the slightly more definitive:

 A map showing geographically, by shades or curves, statistics of various kinds; a statistical map.

Finally, no less than Mark Monmonier ^[1] uses the term to refer to maps which are geometrically distorted for the sake of the message, calling the specific form espoused here an area cartogram. I suspect that in using such strong wording the original author was trying to distinguish between choropleths and cartograms. Any thoughts before I take a chainsaw to this entry? --Belg4mit 19:06, 7 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

After revisting the entry I can see what they're trying to say, but it still needs to be much clearer. --Belg4mit 19:09, 7 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

The article currently states that travel time is a typical example of a cartogram, but I have been unable to find one. Everything I found uses overlays on spatially unchanged maps. I would expect that a car travel time map would shorten the freeways and extend city roads (because they have lots of traffic lights), making rural areas look closer together and cities more spread out (five miles in the city can take an hour, but the same hour on the freeway in Vermont could get you 80 miles). Can anyone provide a single example? I think a map like this would be beautiful. Best would be a dynamic map that plots time from a single starting point, and would allow you do move the starting point for a new map. -96.233.17.206 (talk) 18:53, 18 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Isochronic maps exist, one of the London underground made its way around the web awhile back. --Belg4mit (talk) 03:51, 19 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Added some a few days ago thanks to User:TomCarden. --Belg4mit (talk) 19:37, 23 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Dorling cartograms deserve coverage. --Belg4mit (talk) 02:42, 7 August 2011 (UTC)Reply

 

Although it's nice to have a non-population based cartogram (at least not strictly scaled by population), the amount of space it takes up in this relatively small article has a negative impact on legibility. --Belg4mit (talk) 04:48, 7 August 2011 (UTC)Reply

I do have some issues with this map and calling it a cartogram. If (as it appears) it shows relative data (i.e. per capita) in the size of a country, this is a false use of the concept of a cartogram, which is meant to show absolute data. Think of it as a geographic version of a pie chart: only use data that you can also use for drawing a pie chart. Also, it is problematic to show negative and positive data within one cartogram transformation. Again, think of a pie chart before turning numbers into cartograms. This is not a valid cartogram in its core meaning and should not appear in the related article about cartograms. I suggest replacing this cartogram with a more appropriate example. 31.185.240.3 (talk) 22:37, 25 February 2013 (UTC)GeoGuestReply

I would completely agree. Why is Luxembourg not shown? Because if you take a small number and divide it by an even smaller number, you get a large number which distorts the map unreasonably. You can already see the effect with Malta (and Gozo) being so large at the south of the map. A proper cartogram would simply show the areas proportional to the total net benefit/contribution and only have two colours, to distinguish the flow: even that would be distorted, and even better would be having two: one for gross contributions and one for gross benefits. Byu the example shown is a bad example, and should be removed --Rumping (talk) 11:59, 12 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

For the table in the "Algorithms" section, could someone make an extra column with image examples for them/explanations of how they work? because im not a cartographer or anything, i dont understand or know what they are — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.31.15.173 (talk) 17:24, 29 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

I just completed a significant amount of work on this page, including: a real introduction, history, categories of cartograms, and lots more citations. Two things I did not work on:

• The table of algorithms. It is good, but new ones keep coming out so it needs to be updated and aligned with the classification in the article.
• Figures. Personally, I hate Gastner-Newman cartograms of many variables (sorry, but they look like day-old balloon animals in various states of inflation), but they are already all over the web as well as having four on this page alone. It would be great to see good examples of each of the different types, but unfortunately, many of the best historic and modern cartograms are under copyright.

I reset the quality ratings on this page; would love some more editors and a new rating review! Bplewe (talk) 22:40, 15 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

I'm still rating it at C, since it has many unreferenced sentences and even an entirely unreferenced section, but the article is coming along very well! An important topic, and it would be lovely to see it improved on up to GA! -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 17:14, 16 November 2020 (UTC)Reply