Paunce [N: Pansy]

A great many interesting cartograms have been floating around the internet recently without much in the way of explanation. Sure, they are neat images, but they are also compelling ways to view the world and understand statistical data in a graphic way

Wikipedia: “A cartogram is a map in which area is not preserved. Instead, another thematic mapping variable like travel time or Gross National Product is substituted for land area. In other words, the geometry or space of the map is distorted in order to convey the information of this alternate variable. There are two main types of cartograms: area and distance cartograms.”

Gross Domestic Product:

Child Mortality Rate:

People living with HIV/AIDS:

Total Spending on Healthcare:
Energy Consumption:
Greenhouse Gas Emissions:

An area cartogram is sometimes referred to as 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. More world cartograms can be found at WorldMapper.Here are a series of cartograms representing data (by political party) for the 2004 US Elections:

County-level election results: Using red, blue, and shades of purple to indicate percentages of voters: And here’s what the cartogram looks like: Sources: 1, 2, 3

Below you’ll see a snapshot image of an interesting web app that allows you to plan the design of your own home, using faux hand-sketched plans of rooms. Plunkett is a fairly nifty creation for the amateur draftsperson who likes to plan things out but doesn’t want to bother with cutting out measured versions to fit in their own drawings