Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Carr and Olsen (
) provide examples on the visual appearance of patterns in data
when properly sorted.
hedirection ofLMplotdevelopmentshitedfromstatic LMplotstowardinterac-
tive micromap displays for the Web. Work done for the EPA CEP Web site (Symanzik
et al.,
)was the first in this regard.his project was soon followed byWeb-based
examples of micromaps produced by the USDA-NASS such as in Fig.
.
.
he Digital Government (dg.o) initiative (http://www.diggov.org) is a major re-
search initiative funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and several fed-
eral agencies such as the EPA, the USDA-NASS, the US Census Bureau, the NCI,
the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), etc. his initiative addresses multiple as-
pectsrelatedtofederaldatasuchasvisualization, access,disclosure,security,etc.One
of the proposals funded under dg.o was the Digital Government Quality Graphics
(DGQG) project that included the development of LM plots (http://www.geovista.
psu.edu/grants/dg-qg/index.html).
In the reminder of this section, we look at four main applications of interactive
Web-based LM plots, three of them on federal Web sites. A short overview of inter-
active micromaps, as well as a micromap of the “Places” data (Boyer and Savageau,
),can be found inSymanzik (
). However, additional details are given inthis
section.
Micromaps on the EPA CEP Web Site
1.4.1
he idea of using micromaps on the Web was first considered for the EPA CEP Web
site(previouslyaccessibleathttp://www.epa.gov/CumulativeExposure/).Initially,the
EPA wanted to provide fast and convenient Web-based access to its hazardous air
pollutant (HAP) data for
. In this dataset, concentrations of
air pollutants
were estimated foreach of the
US census tracts in the
contiguous US states
(Rosenbaum et al.,
). he EPA Web site was designed to allow the user to easily
move through the dataset to find information on different air pollutants at differ-
ent geographical locations and at different levels of geographic resolution (e.g., state,
county, census tract) via interactive tables and micromaps. Unfortunately, no part of
the interactive CEP Web site was ever published due to concerns that the
data
were outdated on the intended release date in
. Only a static version of the CEP
Web site without tables and micromaps was accessible for several years. More de-
tails on the work related to the planned interactive CEP Web site can be found in
Symanzik et al. (
a,b,
).
Micromaps on the USDA-NASS Web Site
1.4.2
he USDA-NASS Research and Development Division released a Web site (http:
//www.nass.usda.gov/research/sumpant.htm) in September
that uses interac-
tive micromaps to display data from the
Census of Agriculture. he USDA-
NASSWebsitedisplaysacreage,production,andyieldofharvestedcroplandforcorn,
soybeans, wheat, hay, and cotton.
