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The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

demographics.coopercenter.org

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Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#11

Post by mxfh »

steren wrote: post #6

What a clickbait title

Especially since this map is around since August 2013. http://flowingdata.com/2013/08/12/racial-dot-map/

NYT did one in 2010: http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2008383)

Other static versions as of 2010: http://flowingdata.com/2010/09/20/race-and-ethnicity-by-mapp...

Too bad the tileserver of the density map by Brandon Matt Anderson is currently broken: http://bmander.com/dotmap/index.html but you could still get gourgeous prerendered images here: http://bmander.com/dotmap/store.html

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#14

Post by calinet6 »

vitaminwater wrote: post #2

crazy how less dense western US is, when disregarding california...

It is truly another world, with so much wilderness. This difference changes the culture greatly as well, and how people think about land, the earth, and other people.

You can find good people and good places everywhere, but the west really is better in nearly all respects.

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#15

Post by dj-wonk »

dj-wonk wrote: post #7

Does this graph accurately indicate overall population density across the map? Or does over-plotting hide the city population densities?

In theory, I think so:

> Each of the 308 million dots are smaller than a pixel on your computer screen at most zoom levels. Therefore, the "smudges" you see at the national and regional levels are actually aggregations of many individual dots. The dots themselves are only resolvable at the city and neighborhood zoom levels.

http://www.coopercenter.org/demographics/Racial-Dot-Map#thed...

However, it would depend if high levels of smudging max out the color intensity of a pixel. This could be solved with normalization, but I don't know if they did.

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#16

Post by dj-wonk »

tokenadult wrote: post #10

The actual title of the submitted resource is "The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S." I'm pretty sure that this has been submitted to HN before. It loads rather slowly on my computer here. A zoomed-out view does do a good job of showing the remarkably low population density of the Great Basin in the western United States, which was formerly known as The Great American Desert. Presence or absence…

Re: "rather odd blank spots on a closely zoomed-in view"...

> The locations of the dots do not represent actual addresses. The most detailed geographic identifier in Census Bureau data is the census block. Individual dots are randomly located within a particular census block to match aggregate population totals for that block. As a result, dots in some census blocks may be located in the middle of parks, cemeteries, lakes, or other clearly non-residential areas within that census block. No greater geographic resolution for the 2010 Census data is publicly available (and for good reason).

http://www.coopercenter.org/demographics/Racial-Dot-Map#park...

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#18

Post by dj-wonk »

colanderman wrote: post #9

Dots should darken (or enlarge) when zooming in; as-is, because the dot-density decreases, the image as a whole lightens and becomes difficult to see at high zoom levels.

I was wondering about this. Any suggestions on papers or code that detail that technique?

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#20

Post by jroseattle »

pea wrote: post #12

Jesus, look at the difference between EPA and Palo Alto. I knew it was segregated, but amazing what one road can do.. http://imgur.com/JrLzd8X

Reminds me of this old picture of the racial makeup around 8-mile in Detroit:

http://images.sciencedaily.com/2014/09/140909162349-large.jp...

Green = African American, Orange = Caucasian

FWIW, having moved from the St. Louis area and traveling through Ferguson MO on a daily basis, it's obvious to me the racial makeup is a symptom/result of economics. Race + economics is a hard ship to steer, for sure.

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