Evaluating Cartogram Effectiveness
This work addresses a gap in cartography and visualization research by systematically evaluating cartogram effectiveness, offering practical guidance for users, though it is incremental as it builds on existing taxonomies and methods.
The study tackled the lack of evaluation of cartogram effectiveness in conveying information by assessing four major cartogram types through quantitative performance analysis and subjective preferences, providing recommendations for their use in different tasks and settings.
Cartograms are maps in which areas of geographic regions (countries, states) appear in proportion to some variable of interest (population, income). Cartograms are popular visualizations for geo-referenced data that have been used for over a century and that make it possible to gain insight into patterns and trends in the world around us. Despite the popularity of cartograms and the large number of cartogram types, there are few studies evaluating the effectiveness of cartograms in conveying information. Based on a recent task taxonomy for cartograms, we evaluate four major different types of cartograms: contiguous, non-contiguous, rectangular, and Dorling cartograms. Specifically, we evaluate the effectiveness of these cartograms by quantitative performance analysis, as well as by subjective preferences. We analyze the results of our study in the context of some prevailing assumptions in the literature of cartography and cognitive science. Finally, we make recommendations for the use of different types of cartograms for different tasks and settings.