Prevalence of Obesity in USA - 2012

Objective: The main objective of this map is to study the prevalence of obesity in USA.

Critique: Before any of the experts in data science or data visualization criticize my project in their blogs let me inform you that i am trying to learn and use tile mill, Qgis and scape toad via this data. I am quiet aware that

1) Alaska looks bigger than it should be. I am not sure why but the shape file is the same

2) A better way to show the prevalence of obesity is via a choropleth map over time but www.cdc.gov  already does this for their viewer.

3) A better way would be to show the same image for 2 different time span and show them side by side but the data for obesity in 1990 is not available for all the states and so it would not be a fair comparision.

usefulness of the distorted map: A good way to use a distorted map like this one is to show population or real estate prices in each state, or internet users. The possibilities are endless.

Technology: I have used a QGIS (open source) for creating shapefiles, Scape toad for creating distorted map and tile mill for making the map look prettier.

Refferences:

1)www.cdc.gov - for data

2)https://www.census.gov/  - for USA states shape file

3)http://spatial.ly/2013/06/r_activity/ - for inspiration

Fugly Map - intro 1

Inspiration: I am not that smart to come with an original idea like this one. I came across a tweet by Professor that said that he had asked his students to come up with an ugly USA map and he tweeted the image. I wanted to do something very similar. The link to the professor site : http://www.brenthecht.com/

Tile Mill: The image was created using tile mill an open source project by Mapbox. Its free to download and the documentation is very well written. Its a great tool to quickly generate graphs. It took me like 2 hrs to come up with the image posted above. This image is very similar to what the professor had tweeted.

I will try to write a small introduction on step by step instructions on creating this UGLY map. But if you are curious to learn may be this link will help you get started .

Off course similar things can be done using R. Somehow i think Tile mill is easy to learn and very handy. If you like to play with maps, data and not great at coding then this is a great tool for you.