Hey look, GIS people: Randall Munroe made an xkcd comic just for you.
Tag: xkcd
xkcd’s 2016 Election Map
The maps that appear from time to time on xkcd are usually a lot more whimsical than the one Randall posted today: his somewhat belated “2016 Election Map” assigns one figure for every 250,000 votes for each of the 2016 presidential election candidates. As Randall says in the alt text,1 “I like the idea of cartograms (distorted population maps), but I feel like in practice they often end up being the worst of both worlds—not great for showing geography OR counting people. And on top of that, they have all the problems of a chloro… chorophl… chloropet… map with areas colored in.” This is an issue that election map cartographers regularly have to deal with, as many of my readers know well.
‘They Just Wanted to Fix Some Things About the State Borders’
Today’s xkcd. Apparently, the graphic-designer dictatorship will, in their zeal to fix the state borders, overlook Point Roberts.
xkcd’s Relativistic Election Maps
I’m surprised it took as look as it did for physics and cartography to collide—relativity and choropleth maps—in an xkcd cartoon.
‘Based on Something Something Search Data’
In yesterday’s xkcd cartoon, Randall makes explicit what I think a lot of us have been thinking about those maps assigning a word or a search term to each state or country or whatnot.
xkcd’s Time Zone Map
Randall Munroe is a bad man who is back with another bad map projection to make our eyes bleed. (If he does this often enough he’ll have enough for a book. Heaven forfend.) This one is, like his other maps, fiendishly subtle: it stretches and compresses countries to fit where their time zones ought to be, longitudinally speaking.
xkcd’s Liquid Resize Map Projection
Every so often Randall Monroe puts up a map-related xkcd cartoon, and each time I dutifully post about it. This morning’s is called “Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize.” Or: when Photoshop algorithms attack.
xkcd’s U.S. State Names
Randall is messing with us again in today’s xkcd, which assigns malapropisms and synophones to U.S. state names. The results are about what you’d expect.
Previously: xkcd’s United States Map.
xkcd’s British Map
Today’s xkcd is a British map labelled by an American. It’s another one of those where the longer you stare at it, the more it hurts. Randall’s messing with us again.
xkcd’s Map Age Guide
Today’s xkcd is a flowchart for figuring out the age of an undated world map. Look carefully.
xkcd’s United States Map
Today’s xkcd is a map of the United Sta—wait … what has Randall done? My eyes … they’re bleeding.
‘Basically Just Population Maps’
In response to The End of Maps in Seven Charts, Duncan Jackson writes to point out the above xkcd comic from 23 November 2012, which says something quite similar about maps that really just show population density.
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