New scheme and game about maps

[Kyle]

I have a new scheme about maps. It comes in the form of a game aimed at high school and middle school students, as well as their teachers. I thought some of you might enjoy it.

The idea is that, each week, there is a new map to puzzle over. All the maps are thematic maps, and it's your job to figure out what the map represents. You can mull it over for a week. On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, there will be a hint that will help you figure out the answer. If you submit a correct answer when fewer hints have been posted, you'll earn more points. Points don't have any practical value yet; for the moment, you just accumulate points for the sake of accumulating points.

This week's map is a cartogram of the countries of the world, which you can see here: http://weeklymap.org/005.html. If you have a good guess for what it is, use the linked form to submit your answer and you can get some points. Please don't post the answer here and ruin it for everybody else.

[AKKOLADE]

This one's really easy. It's what Europe would look like if it made a music video for its 90s rap song.

[AKKOLADE]

Legit question: the description says the cartograph is of the counties of the U.S., but it obviously is a world map. What's going on here?

[Kyle]

Legit question: the description says the cartograph is of the counties of the U.S., but it obviously is a world map. What's going on here?

I copied and pasted from last week without changing the text to match this week's map. Oops.

[cchiego]

This is awesome Kyle. There are so many ways that you could use this--as a weekly class activity in a high school class, as a starter for a college lecture as students come in, etc. Keep it up!

[Habitat_Against_Humanity]

Yeah, this is great. Just spent the better part of an hour on this week's map.

[Kyle]

Thanks, Chris and Nolan -- very glad to know people are enjoying it. There are now two hints for Tuesday for those of you who need them!

[Kyle]

Thanks to the very many of you who submitted answers last week. I'm glad to see so much excitement! Unfortunately, only four people were correct. Here's the answer: http://weeklymap.org/005_answer.html

As I mentioned in my first post, my main goal is for middle school and high school students to enjoy these maps. But after I posted here, I got quite the flood of submissions from many of you who haven't been high school students for quite some time. Appreciating your enthusiasm, I added a new category for "non-students." You're quite welcome to continue submitting (just make sure you select the right category in the form now that I have it all set up correctly), but I also hope you'll share the site with some younger students. Thanks!

This week's new map is up. It's a proportional symbol map. It's fairly difficult like last week's; next week I'll do something much easier. Here's the link: http://weeklymap.org/006.html

[Wynaut]

For anyone interested, this is still being updated.

[Kyle]

For anyone interested, this is still being updated.

Indeed, I'm still at it. I'm heartened to see that the interest from the over-18 crowd has been enthusiastic (and rapidly increasing this week), with more than forty solutions submitted for the current map. Alas, interest from the under-18 set has been somewhat more tepid. This isn't really surprising, given the woeful state of geography education in this country, but it is kind of sad. The battle will be ongoing, I suppose.

[AKKOLADE]

I have to remember this exists :(

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I'll do a better job of sharing it on Facebook each week. Some of my non-quizbowl friends found this interesting as well.

A lot of adults are into graphical representation of data.

[Kyle]

I have to remember this exists :(

Here's your weekly reminder that this exists! If you check the results, you'll see that Bruce was among the 23 people who got five points this week (as, indeed, are several other quiz bowlers).

This week's map is a proportional symbol map, and I think it's a fun one: http://weeklymap.org/012.html

[Habitat_Against_Humanity]

In other map games that utilize your knowledge of Europa Universalis IV:

http://www.thegoparcade.com/game/bomb-the-right-place

[Kyle]

There is a huge Geography Awareness Week-inspired blowout extravaganza this week: three maps instead of the usual one.

[AKKOLADE]

Is it safe to assume that the chloropleths represent different statistics for each map?

[Kyle]

Is it safe to assume that the chloropleths represent different statistics for each map?

Yes.

[Kyle]

Disregarding any notion of message board propriety, I am going to bump my five-month-old thread to let you know that I just posted map #30 and that you're all still welcome to play.

[Charm Bison]

You've gotten me hooked on these. Thanks for that.

[Fado Alexandrino]

These continue to be cool. Best one so far has got to be map 29.

Two suggestions:

1. For proportional symbol maps and dot maps, it would be helpful to know if these represent all the possible things or just the top some number of possible things.

the small purple dots (there are nineteen) indicate that a particular place has the least of that same statistic

However, the answer revealed that the small purple dots had X = 3, while X = 1 and 2 were not included, but exist.

2. For cartograms, it would be better if it were obvious which country had a statistic of 0. I got Map 18 wrong because I thought Canada had a nonzero value.

[Kyle]

Thanks. I'm still working on my cartography. You're right that both these things are frustrating, but in the case of the cartograms, I'm not quite sure how to fix it. The algorithm I use actually computes the amount of error in the map -- that is, the amount of deviation from what the areas should be, caused by the inability to contort the map in all the ways it would have to -- and that error is always much more than I would want. For the moment, I don't have a better system.

Re: Map 29, you'll have to take that up with Bruce and Sam, who both took the opportunity of submitting a correct answer to question my sanity. Glad somebody was on board.