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by lifeisstillgood 4884 days ago
Interestingly there was a discussion over Bill Gate's measuring teachers report with heated debate about the right graph to choose (scatterplots vs xxx)

I like this and it is interesting information, but sorry, the "right" graphic to use here is the Mercator projection. I have to scroll down a long way to see which country people leave Azerbijan for (Russia).

But the data is interesting.

And its a helluva lot harder to code what I want :-)
4 comments
diziet 4884 days ago
Why the Mercator projection specifically? It's a map projection for navigation purposes. What makes sense is for the right/left column to re-arrange itself by size once you click on a corresponding country.
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archangel_one 4884 days ago
I'd argue that the Mercator projection is not the right projection if you want to show the entire world. The distortion introduced over large areas is fairly extreme, and I think relative geographical sizes are fairly important for displaying that kind of graphic.
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snogglethorpe 4882 days ago
> The distortion introduced over large areas is fairly extreme

Yeah, but the areas which are most distorted are also usually the least populated, by a long shot, so it may be just fine for showing anything related to people... sure Greenland's way too huge, but, well, meh...

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roel_v 4884 days ago
"but sorry, the "right" graphic to use here is the Mercator projection."

Maybe I'm just not understanding you, but this doesn't make sense to me. The site doesn't even show a map, what does the Mercator projection have to do with it?

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lifeisstillgood 4884 days ago
The data is number of people migrating from country X to country Y - so click on a country on the map of the world (Mercator Projection) and see lines appear linking UK with all the countries where people have emigrated.
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andrewcooke 4884 days ago
another alternative (easier to program, but not the "natural" representation) would be to put the data in a circle and use the same location for both arrival and departure. i did something similar for package dependencies - the code is offline now, but you can see a screenshot at http://acooke.org/portfolio/practicl/
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