9 replies to this topic

[yuletide]

Presented for your viewing pleasure, a cartogram created using Adrian Herzog's Mapresso applet of Heavy Metal around the world. I made this map as a component of my final project for a cartography class I'm taking. This is only a draft, but I thought others might enjoy looking at it. Areas are proportional to # of metal bands per country, as are the colors. (In the next iteration, the choropleth scheme will correspond to bands per capita rather than absolute count.)

Attached Files

•  MetalCartogram.png   48.48K   168 downloads

[Hans van der Maarel]

Great idea Throw in some umlauts and you're all done

[A. Fenix]

ROCK ON!

(i'm banging my head and tearing up my electric as i type this...)

[ELeFevre]

I'm impressed that you actually took the time to process all of the information at the metal-archives. You should get a golden Horned-Hand award or something. Which country has the most metal bands per capita? Japan? Norway? Germany? Which country is the Kingdom of Metal?

[Hans van der Maarel]

I'm impressed that you actually took the time to process all of the information at the metal-archives. You should get a golden Horned-Hand award or something. Which country has the most metal bands per capita? Japan? Norway? Germany? Which country is the Kingdom of Metal?

Funny enough, it appears (it's always difficult to tell with this kind of maps) there's a lot of heavy metal bands in The Netherlands (or, as I should say from now on: Thë Nëthërländs), so we might just be the per-capita leaders

I always said we are the country that goes to 11

Oh, and we're also a proper kingdom!

[frax]

For your next assignment, you should map the ratio of heavy metal bands to reggae artists or something!

[Martin Gamache]

The way mapresso handles Alaska seems a bit odd to me?

[yuletide]

Wow! I'm amazed at the response! I never expected such enthusiasm... but then I should have known that metal would find a home among the wonderful world of cartographers...

I'm impressed that you actually took the time to process all of the information at the metal-archives. You should get a golden Horned-Hand award or something. Which country has the most metal bands per capita? Japan? Norway? Germany? Which country is the Kingdom of Metal?

Ah, all good guesses, but the top spot goes to mighty FINLAND!

Funny enough, it appears (it's always difficult to tell with this kind of maps) there's a lot of heavy metal bands in The Netherlands (or, as I should say from now on: Thë Nëthërländs), so we might just be the per-capita leaders

I always said we are the country that goes to 11

Oh, and we're also a proper kingdom!

Haha, alas, the honor goes to Finland for top spot... but the Netherlands are indeed a place "wrought" with metal =)

Given the level of interest, I'll continue posting my results as they come... I've already made choropleths of bands per capita, as well as various socioeconomic indicators that might help explain the distribution (GDP per capita, CD sales per country--though this data was impossible to find anything decent for, life expectancy, literacy, etc...)

Any ideas/advice (especially relating to cartograms and similar mapping techniques) would be gladly welcomed!

Oh, and about Alaska, I've been trying to figure out how to fix that... I think I'm going to go back to metal-archives and try to count the number of bands in alaska, then separate Alaska from the US (as if it were a separate country), then give alaska its proper attribute value, and subtract that from the existing US total... But the whole final thing is due Friday and I've barely enough time to get the thing into basic shape... so this may have to wait until this summer.

Now, shameless plug...
For those of you who are, in fact, metal inclined... I urge you to check out my radio show, Melting Point Radio. Our past shows are all online as a podcast, along with the playlists-->http://meltingpointradio.blogspot.com/ (I'll also be posting all the maps on that blog). Our final (probably) show of the semester is this thursday, 5/10 at 9-10pm EST. Listen online at http://wrmc.middlebury.edu/listen or just subscribe to the podcast (see the blog)...

[Martin Gamache]

Oh, and about Alaska, I've been trying to figure out how to fix that... I think I'm going to go back to metal-archives and try to count the number of bands in alaska, then separate Alaska from the US (as if it were a separate country), then give alaska its proper attribute value, and subtract that from the existing US total...

That should fix it I guess. But it requires treating that state differently then every other country. For fixing it visually, it works.

I have not played around with the mapresso tool very much, I just find it odd that it gives a disproportionate amount of weight to Alaska, maybe because there is more room around it. It would be nice if it could grow the continental US in a disproportionate way than Alaska and Hawaii.

[yuletide]

Oh, and about Alaska, I've been trying to figure out how to fix that... I think I'm going to go back to metal-archives and try to count the number of bands in alaska, then separate Alaska from the US (as if it were a separate country), then give alaska its proper attribute value, and subtract that from the existing US total...

That should fix it I guess. But it requires treating that state differently then every other country. For fixing it visually, it works.

I have not played around with the mapresso tool very much, I just find it odd that it gives a disproportionate amount of weight to Alaska, maybe because there is more room around it. It would be nice if it could grow the continental US in a disproportionate way than Alaska and Hawaii.

Yeah, it is odd. The continental US doesn't change much with each iteration, but Alaska just keeps growing... and growing... I'm hoping to get better results from the Cartogram Creator macro/script for ArcMap (which is running right now).