Final Project

For more information:

• USPTO Online Database: used to collect the data on patents and their corresponding invention and assignment states.
  
• US Census Regions Map: provides a simple map of how the US Census regions are divided.
• USPTO General Information Concerning Patents: Answers basic questions about patents including defining patent assignment, patent laws, and how patents are awarded.
  
• An Introduction to the Law and Economics of Intellectual Property: an article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, which offers a good overview to how the patenting system promotes innovation.
  
• The Geographic Sources of Innovation: an article by Richard Florida from the Annals of American Geographers which, in part, details why innovation is important and what factors promote a successful innovative economy.
  

Lab 10

Lab 9: Web vs. Print

Here's the image for my Lab 9 map. In printing at home on a color jet the colors came out great, except for the fact it created a couple of arbitrary lines that split the color in the background. There was a line at the bottom, on one side a darker shade of the green and on the other a lighter. In my AI document there was nothing that I could find to explain this. I think that the darker color was the actual fill of my background. Aside from that, the printed copy looked great--actually, I was very surprised that they came out as I had envisioned and as the digital copy looked. I was very happy with the color ramping--I choosing the colors I did because I wanted to not only make the larger percentages stand out, but also the lower values, because they are just as significant within my data set. I also printed out the image in the lab using the color laser jet printer, in which the colors came out dramatically different. They were much, much darker and muted than they are in the digital copy giving the map an entirely different feel.

Housing in MD

Here's my image for Lab 8:

Choropleth Maps & Classification Schemes

Here are my two choropleth maps: one classified into quintiles, the other equal interval. Unfortuetly, visually there didn't seem to be much of a difference in these two classification schemes, and I presumed there would be. Looking at the raw data, the second lowest class in equal interval has 4 more states in this than quintiles. If the data had been more varied this would make a large difference; sending states into other classes, and changing the overall visual appearance of the map. If I had chosen 3 or 4 classification schemes instead I think that the difference in the two schemes would have been more apparent. In retrospect, I would have choosen a fewer number of classes.

Choropleth Maps

This is a map I found on CNN, showing how much fundraising was done in each state throughout the country in the 2008 Presidential Election and Primaries. I thought it was neat because you can also look at each county in each state and sort by every candidate to see exactly how much was raised. Not only is it a great example of a choropleth map, but also a great interactive map that allows you to store and show a large amount of data. Check out the site where I found this map to see the full extent: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/map/

Dots!

I completely forgot to post Lab 6 last Thursday, but here it is:

Overall, I am really happy with the way it turned out. I wished that I had had a base map without county lines so that I could have made the county boundaries a lighter gray and the state outline black. Other than that it was just tedious creating and placing all of the dots.

Lab 5: VA, DC, MD

Dot Density Map Examples

Here are 2 dot density maps from one of my classes lectures. They're obviously not PC (note the date of the census) but they are pretty classic examples of dot density maps.

A Cool *Historical* Map of Virginia, Maryland, DC (and Delaware too!)

Here is a cool map I found of MD, VA, DC, and DE. The full title is: Map of Virginia, Maryland and Delaware Exhibiting the Post Offices, Post Roads, Canals, Rail Roads, &c. By David H. Burr. (Late Topographer to the Post Office.) Geographer to the House of Representatives of the U.S. John Arrowsmith. Entered ... July 10th, 1839, by David H. Burr ... District of Columbia.



I know the image is small, but if you go here you can see it and it enables you to zoom in and see the great detail and artistic discipline that went into creating this map.

Lab 4 Type

Labeling & Type

I found a great map with a good use of type placement, font, color, etc in the Fairfax County's GIS & Mapping: Map Gallery. The map shows Fairfax County's Elementary Schools and their appropriate districts. It's a in a PDF format, so I can't save it as picture, but here's the link.

Mollweide

Here's my graphic for Lab 3, Mollweide projection. This was not quite as difficult as I had suspected, but it did take a few tries to get the measurements correct.

Projections, oh my!

Projections are my least favorite thing about geography. It just seems there are ENDLESS possibilities, and none are the perfect solution. I don't like the run around. None the less I hit the internet to find an exciting map projection. In my wandering I found a cool blog called the Map Room. I found an article that was in the magazine Mental_Floss, called "3 Controversial Maps." I thought this one was interesting for my projection post because it illustrates the main problems that occur with translating a sphere to a flat surface.




Check out the article here for the other 2 'controversial' maps included in the article along with a full explanation of this one.

Interesting Map...a little late.

I found this map while clicking around on various geography related sites. This is a map of the results from the 2004 US Presidential Election. This first map is a very generic version of the results, red representing state where a majority of the voters cast a ballot for republican. Blue represents where a majority of the voters who voted democratic.The map below tries to represent the raw data more accurately*, where purple represents counties where only a slim majority voted republican. I thought this was a good illustration of no only how data can be represented in different ways through a map, but also how changing the scale you are representing can change the overall impact of a map.
On this website they also do some cool things with cartograms, check it out here.
*This is my interpurtation of the map, others map think that it could be more inaccurate...

Geiod? Ellipsoid? Sphere?

Illustration for Lab 2:

Geography Links

Here are some links that I find useful:

Map Projections

I like this website because it contains all of the information you could ever want to know about map projections. This is not because I particularly like map projections, actually it's quite the contrary. I find that they tend to make my head hurt. This website is useful because it goes through all of the different types of projections, what properties they distort/preserve, equations for map projections (that's bound to give me a migraine), and a history of different map projections. I find this useful to refresh and reinforce my knowledge of projections. (Did I mention that this is my least favorite part of geography?)

2000 Census Info

This website, although pretty generic, contains TONS of data that can be used in researching and collecting data for many different maps. Even though as we approach 2010 when we will have an infinite amount of up-to-date data, this is still a great resource. There is also community profile information including income and poverty data through the 2007 American Community Survey.

Victoria Transportation Encyclopedia

I have found this useful because I have an interest within the geography field in urban planning. This online encyclopedia is published and maintained by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in British Columbia. It includes studies for promoting and achieving more efficient, less congested transportation solutions. The website includes 'strategies to achieve specific objectives' such as congestion reduction, energy conservation, promoting health and fitness, and parking solutions.