My Week in Maps

This week has been a busy one with the “publication” of a couple of maps I have been involved with alongside the circulation of a few cartographic gems. I thought I would share my mapping highlights.

To have something published in the National Geographic is a great honour. The map of US Surnames has proved hugely popular and was a great project to work on. A real high point in my PhD research so far.

The popularity of a London version of the US Surname Map outstripped all expectations with 10s of thousands of visitors. Cartographically less impressive than the US map but much more detailed, I think the main thing people are most surprised (and perhaps disappointed about) is just how many “Smiths” there are!

I’ve not quite worked out if this map shows anything surprising but I really like the cartography so “Profane Mountains, Polite Plains” gets a shout out here. It shows the frequency of swearwords in people’s Tweets across the US.

This map of scientific collaborations (detailed here) demonstrates nicely the strong academic ties between some countries over others. I think its a great map which I hope (although I can’t seem to confirm) was created with R. The map was actually created using MySQL, Java and Photoshop (thanks @beyondmaps).