Area Cartograms
An area cartogram is sometimes referred to as a value-by-area map or an isodemographic map, the latter particularly for a population cartogram, which illustrates the relative sizes of the populations of the countries of the world by scaling the area of each country in proportion to its population; the shape and relative location of each country is retained to as large an extent as possible, but inevitably a large amount of distortion results. Other synonyms in use are anamorphic map, density-equalizing map and Gastner map.
Area cartograms may be contiguous or noncontiguous. The area cartograms shown on this page are all contiguous, while a good example of a noncontiguous cartogram was published in The New York Times. The online resource SHOW®, provided by Mapping Worlds, creates discontiguous cartograms for different geographies (United States, Japan and World at this time) interactively, allowing users to quickly compare various characteristics.
A collection of about 700 area cartograms is available at Worldmapper, a collaborative team of researchers at the Universities of Sheffield and Michigan.
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Famous quotes containing the word area:
“Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is. Like the national market for soap or automobiles and the enlarged arena of federal power, the national cash-in area for prestige has grown, slowly being consolidated into a truly national system.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)