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January 2019 – Quiz Time! Firstly, a very belated happy new year! It’s still January as I write this, so think I can just about get away with it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a very busy start to the year, so thought I’d take a moment to slow down with this geography quiz. Turns out that both out of this world and on it, it’s been also been a busy month in geographical news. How much have you been paying attention to it? Find out with this short quiz below.   Happy Mapping, David  Read 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 →

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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 →

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 →

USA and Gun Ownership

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Right to keep and bear arms? The topic of firearms control and gun violence is one to approach with caution, given one, the fatalities involved, and two, that in the USA particularly, it can often stir strong debate and emotion on either side. However, following (another) mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida and the perhaps unprecedented public demonstrations following this in USA, and around the world, as part of ‘March For Our Lives’ – it is a topic which is hard to ignore. With the aim promoting tougher gun control legislation and raising awareness of gun violence, it has brought the debateRead More →

GlobalFishingWatch_map

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Gone fishing Quick question – what do Leonardo Di Caprio, a New Zealand data visualisation agency and David Attenborough have in common? They have all used highly effective visual tools to highlight threats to marine life*. Allow me to explain. I recently stumbled upon a striking and important interactive map from an organisation called ‘Global Fishing Watch’ (GFW), an organisation which is supported by the Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation. In the words of the Oscar winning actor himself,  “with the data Global Fishing Watch provides, governments, fishery management organizations, researchers and the fishing industry can work together to rebuild fisheries and protect critical marine habitats.”Read More →