Cool census maps

The NY Times map of distribution of people by race at the resolution of census tracts is pretty cool.  You can zoom in on any zipcode, and move around fairly easily by dragging the map.

The uniform spreading of dots within each tract works well in urban areas, where a census tract may be only a few square blocks, but in rural areas, it is very misleading, as a the population is typically concentrated along a few major roads or in villages, not spread out uniformly through state parks and mountain tops.

The color coding of the dots does not seem to have taken color-blind individuals into account.  The map designers would be well advised to read this squareCircleZ blog on color blindness and color choices for graphics and presentations and Okabe and Ito’s web page on color universal design.

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