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I sense your presents… Wintertime in Western culture is known for the religious and pagan traditions of gift-giving, merriment and feasting around Christmas. Commonly across many cultures, it is considered Santa Claus delivers gifts. Last year we asked, ‘where’ does Santa come from? This year we are looking into ‘how’ – namely how does Santa Claus (or whichever gift-bringer) navigate and deliver their gifts? Using a map of course! We can only guess on the actual map Santa uses – but I imagine that it could look like something like the stylised map below which I hope you enjoy. Several cultures have different figures whoRead More →

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Further depth Those who’ve explored this site in the past will know that I have analysed the geography of train networks on multiple occasions, particularly in the United Kingdom. Maybe it’s my bias being a rail commuter, but it’s a topic I’m returning to again! Access to train networks shapes many people’s lives – and is two-fold. Am I near to a station and are the trains reliable? To investigate ‘access’, we start by exploring the relationship between population density and station density in the UK. Are there ‘gaps’ in train station provision? Next we examine then the temporal and spatial patterns of train punctuality.Read More →

Music and Maps

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Maps and musicians – the B-side Following on from part one from our look at musicians links to maps, comes the difficult second album, as we look at five more artists and their relationships to maps. Without further ado, let’s get going again… 5) M.I.A. Born as Mathangi Arulpragasam in Hounslow to Sri Lankan Tamil resistance activists, being raised in both Sri Lanka, India and back to London – the artist known as M.I.A., was perhaps always going to have unique geographical take on the world. The Grammy winning artist, is known for her unusual sound sampling, provocative lyrics and subject matters in her work –Read More →

Music and Maps

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Maps – Wait, they don’t love you like I love you Music and maps. Geography and the arts. They may or may not seem like natural partners – music is about cultural and creative expression, and the general rhythm and tune to life; the other is about precision, accuracy and scientific understanding of the processes and reality of the world around us. However, as I’ve discussed in the past, there are very strong links between the two – the list is endless of number of songs that mention ‘places’ (e.g. London Calling, Born in the USA, Straight Outta Compton etc). That’s before we consider geography’sRead More →

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Vote for your Favourite Map! August for me has gone far too quickly, and Map of the Month has also come round again very quickly! Fortunately, as was the case last month, there’s been some great maps to explore over the dry summer spell. To follow up on last month, congratulations to Craig Taylor on winning the inaugural Map of the Month with his awesome #PlotmyPaws doggy themed data viz. From looking at recent activity, #plotmypaws is going from strength to strength. Back working on my #plotmypaws project this weekend, lots of #dog tracks coming in now! I want to believe they are somehow coordinatingRead More →

Map of The MonthJuly2018

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Vote for your Favourite Map! In the first of a new series comes the (hopefully to become) prestigious Map of the Month award, where we vote on the best examples of  inspiring cartography, data visualisation and geographical science over the last month. After spending the past month trawling through the internet, I’ve whittled it down to 5 nominees for you to vote for. With geographical pride at stake, the power is with you! Let’s look at the candidates… Metro/Tram Map Amsterdam – Eric Hammink   Amsterdam is one of my favourite cities and has recently undergone updates to it’s Metro and Tram infrastructure. A first-classRead More →

World Cup Quiz

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Let’s get quizzical So today I’m going to be doing something a little bit different to normal. Rather than rambling about a great map or geographical subject, here’s something a bit more fun. I’ve talked about geography and football before (see here and here) and particularly recently with the World Cup currently taking place in Russia. Some of you may have enjoyed the excitement of the tournament, while some may have no interest in football whatsoever. However, hopefully some sort of love of geography and maps brings us all together – therefore I’ve made an interactive quiz below. While it relates to the 32 countries takingRead More →

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Surpassing goals With a matter of hours to go before the month long football extravaganza begins in Moscow, it seems an opportune moment to look at the relationship between the beautiful game and the beautiful subject (geography if you were wondering). This is a topic I have looked at previously, examining the relationship between economic power (through GDP at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)) and footballing prowess (through FIFA World Rankings). On the eve of the World Cup, it is time to revisit the current state of play. With two web maps, we can look at those who have qualified, past successes of countries, travel distances, andRead More →

Eurovision 2018 - Jury - Public Vote Difference

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Overcoming geography While dust settles in Lisbon, after another crazy night of Eurovision revelry, we can now take time to analyse the patterns of this most geographical of contests. Netta Barzilai won the contest with the song “Toy” for Israel, overcoming it’s isolated geography and lack of neighbours, to win the Eurovision Song Contest 2018. Maybe the best song really does triumph over geography and ‘political voting’. This is a topic I have covered in the past, and while it would be naive to think this is a solely music contest – one only had to hear the audible boos when the televoting came fromRead More →

Global Chocolate Consumption per Capita (2018)

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I Should Cocoa… Ugh. I’ve had too much chocolate. I’m writing this on Easter Sunday, surrounded by temptation in the form of several variations and combinations of chocolate, as is customary in the Western world at this time of year. It turns out you can have too much of a good thing – real ‘first world problems’. Talking of #firstworldproblems, chocolate addiction really is an issue for the developed world, where chocolate consumption is at its highest in this part of world – maps bear this out. So given this time of  year, I thought it would be fitting to look into the geographical patternsRead More →