[an_opabinia]

A red-and-blue map is more like a brand logo for election news. The thumbnail for the Facebook or Twitter story. The saturated red and blue colors have an almost astrological meaning to people, it's got nothing to do with information.

Maps people struggle with this, they're always using maps to try to visualize a piece of data when almost always a short table would be better.

Data graphics people are themselves a subset of a family of wonks that spend 50% of their day rehashing the same tired stories, and the other 50% lamenting how innumerate people are.

Did you ever consider that maybe the reason the maps are stupid is because they're stupid as a whole, not because there's something wrong with the reader or the designer?

[vharuck]

In my experience of reporting data to non-data-saavy people, I've learned people love maps. Maybe because they like finding their home state/county/city. For whatever reason, they love maps.

I've also learned the hardest part of my job is getting people to read and remember the data. Replacing their preconceived notions is difficult. I'll use any cheap trick (short of showing data inaccurately) to do this. So I make them the maps they love. I use the colors they expect. If I show tables, they're used by experts for further analysis and ignored by the people who actually make decisions.

>The saturated red and blue colors have an almost astrological meaning to people, it's got nothing to do with information.

That meaning is information. Is it the best thing for a nuanced data graphic? No. But showing a nuanced graphic is like handing somebody Principia Marhematica when they ask what 1 + 1 is. Sure, it had the answer. And sure, it's great for people with mathematical skill. But it's overkill most of the time.

[cycomanic]

I can tell you that in pretty much every presentation context a graph (no matter what graph) beats a table. We are much more accustomed to visually processing things than through numbers. I mean take the example of the given map (and let's keep it to the "simple" winner takes all map), the table for this map would definitely be so big that you could not easily tell which party won more counties. With the map it would be one glance.

Yes as the author points out it does not tell you anything about the number of people in the county, but trying to convey information in graphics well is difficult (and when people get it right it can be truly amazing, i.e. take Roslings talks, which really visualised public health effects and enabled many people to understand for the first time). However, everyone who regularly has to present data to people should invest time into learning about how to graph and visualise your data.

[mygo]

I kind of see where an_opabinia is coming from. Being able to tell which candidate won more counties could be accomplished via a 2x2 table.

But it would miss out on other information, which I think people are interested in exploring as well. The geospatial relationships are better presented in a map, and are preserved in a choropleth map in a way that hex maps and cartogram maps would distort.