Cartogram Construction

A cartogram is a map in which the area of each region is rescaled so that it is proportional to some variable — population, votes, GDP — rather than to its true geographic size. The aim is to correct the visual bias of ordinary maps, where large but sparsely populated regions dominate the eye while small, populous ones nearly vanish, by making each region as big as the quantity it represents. Cartogram construction is the family of techniques that produce these value-by-area maps, ranging from contiguous density-equalizing diffusion to non-contiguous circle and rectangle methods, each balancing the accuracy of areas against the recognizability of shapes.