Area proportional to population maps

maps
R
data viz
Kenya
Author

Aaron Erlich

Published

December 7, 2014

Restored from my original WordPress blog (posted December 7, 2014).

I was cleaning out my downloads folder, and I remembered I had made this cool map of Kenya that uses the algorithm of Scharl and Weichselbraun to make a density equalizing map of Kenya. This map shows each of Kenya’s counties with the area proportional to the voting-age population. You can see how unequal the county sizes are in the map.

Cartogram of Kenya's counties distorted by voting-age population; the arid northern counties shrink while the highlands, Nairobi, and the Lake Victoria west expand.

Density-equalizing cartogram of Kenya — each county’s area is proportional to its voting-age population.

Ordinary, undistorted map of Kenya's counties shown for comparison.

Kenya’s counties drawn to their true geographic area, for comparison.