Put a dot on the map for each data point, or colour regions if that’s how the data is.
Given this is effectively one piece of data (% of income on rent) you can colour it on a scale. A red dot is 100% on rent. A green dot is 0% on rent. Colours in between represent middle states.
I actually prefer this though, easier to see detail instead of having to compare shades of colours, our brains have issues with that sometimes. (This can be avoided with a good colour scheme I guess?)
Greatly prefer this as well. It’s a lot easier to tell the difference between 50 and 75% with a pie chart than it is with your eyeballs looking at how similar or different two colors are.
Scrap the pie charts. It’s a lot easier to see the difference between 50 and 55% when it’s represented as the coloured part of a column representing 100% Pie charts only work when the difference are big enough.
Do you have an example? For me, it would be very difficult to tell the difference between a single color that’s a mix of 50% blue, 50% green, vs 45% blue, 55% green, and have any kind of idea what value they corresponded to. But with a pie chart, it’s easy.
Are you talking about this kind of bar chart kind of thing?
(picture attached)
For me, this wouldn’t work as well on a map because a pie chart is kind of like a big point, but the rectangular shape of the column would look weird on a map. You wouldn’t know where the center of the column was supposed to be as easily as the pie chart is clearly directly on top of the city it’s talking about.
But most of this seems like it is about subjective tastes rather than peer-reviewed studies on what kind of map is more useful.
Put a dot on the map for each data point, or colour regions if that’s how the data is.
Given this is effectively one piece of data (% of income on rent) you can colour it on a scale. A red dot is 100% on rent. A green dot is 0% on rent. Colours in between represent middle states.
I actually prefer this though, easier to see detail instead of having to compare shades of colours, our brains have issues with that sometimes. (This can be avoided with a good colour scheme I guess?)
Greatly prefer this as well. It’s a lot easier to tell the difference between 50 and 75% with a pie chart than it is with your eyeballs looking at how similar or different two colors are.
Scrap the pie charts. It’s a lot easier to see the difference between 50 and 55% when it’s represented as the coloured part of a column representing 100% Pie charts only work when the difference are big enough.
Do you have an example? For me, it would be very difficult to tell the difference between a single color that’s a mix of 50% blue, 50% green, vs 45% blue, 55% green, and have any kind of idea what value they corresponded to. But with a pie chart, it’s easy.
Are you talking about this kind of bar chart kind of thing?
(picture attached)
For me, this wouldn’t work as well on a map because a pie chart is kind of like a big point, but the rectangular shape of the column would look weird on a map. You wouldn’t know where the center of the column was supposed to be as easily as the pie chart is clearly directly on top of the city it’s talking about.
But most of this seems like it is about subjective tastes rather than peer-reviewed studies on what kind of map is more useful.
It’s great for detail, but bad for getting a general look. Could get busy with more data points.
I think it’s a good choice for this particular map, but I could imagine a different map with more cities which would be a bad choice for pie charts.