{"id":1789027,"date":"2020-07-18T14:57:45","date_gmt":"2020-07-18T18:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/?p=1789027"},"modified":"2020-07-19T17:27:19","modified_gmt":"2020-07-19T21:27:19","slug":"georgias-covid-19-maps-bad-faith-or-bad-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2020\/07\/georgias-covid-19-maps-bad-faith-or-bad-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Georgia\u2019s COVID-19 Maps: Bad Faith or Bad Design?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In How to Lie with Maps<\/em><\/a>, Mark Monmonier warns that map readers \u201cmust watch out for statistical maps carefully contrived to prove the points of self-promoting scientists, manipulating politicians, misleading advertisers, and other propagandists. Meanwhile, this is an area in which the widespread use of mapping software has made unintentional cartographic self-deception inevitable.\u201d<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

So which of these two scenarios\u2014careful contrivance or unintentional self-deception\u2014is at play on the Georgia Department of Public Health\u2019s COVID-19 daily status report<\/a>\u00a0page?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/andishehnouraee\/status\/1284237474831761408<\/p>\n

Twitter user @andishehnouraee notes the difference in scale between two county-by-county COVID-19 maps of Georgia<\/a>. The earlier map maxes out at 4,661 cases per 100,000, the later (and as of this writing, current) map maxes out at 5,165 cases per 100,000. As they point out, there has been a 49 percent rise in total COVID-19 cases between the two maps, but you wouldn\u2019t know it at a glance, because the scales have changed in the meantime.<\/p>\n

Is this, as @andishehnouraee suggests, a concerted attempt to hide the severity of the outbreak in Georgia\u2014or, as T. J. Jankun-Kelly thinks might be the case<\/a>, something that happens when you max out the old scale. In other words: bad faith or bad design? (Or both: it can be both.)<\/p>\n

Update 19 Jul<\/em>:<\/strong> See Twitter threads from Darrell Fuhriman<\/a> and Jon Schwabish<\/a> disagreeing with critiques of the Georgia Public Health maps. It\u2019s worth clarifying that only one map is ever viewable at the website: the map\u2019s scale has changed over time, but it\u2019s not like they\u2019re side-by-side except in @andishehnouraee\u2019s tweet.<\/p>\n

Update #2:<\/em><\/strong> See Jon Schwabish\u2019s blog post critiquing the data visualization critique in more detail<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In How to Lie with Maps, Mark Monmonier warns that map readers \u201cmust watch out for statistical maps carefully contrived to prove the points of self-promoting scientists, manipulating politicians, misleading advertisers, and other propagandists. Meanwhile,… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[1413,1426,228,1453,1445,1439],"class_list":["post-1789027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-health","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-disease","tag-georgia-us","tag-pandemics","tag-public-health","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1785913,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2018\/07\/how-to-lie-with-maps-third-edition\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789027,"position":0},"title":"How to Lie with Maps, Third Edition","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"10 July 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Mark Monmonier's How to Lie with Maps has always been about how to read maps, not how to make them. The map-using public is inclined not only to believe what's on the map, but to trust it: why would so many people willingly drive their cars into ditches, if they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Book Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Book Reviews","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/book-reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/how-to-lie-with-maps-3rd-199x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1788902,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2020\/06\/bending-lines-an-online-exhibition-from-the-leventhal-center\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789027,"position":1},"title":"Bending Lines, an Online Exhibition from the Leventhal Center","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"17 June 2020","format":"link","excerpt":"Bending Lines: Maps and Data From Distortion to Deception, the latest exhibition from the Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library, is a wide-ranging, comprehensive look at the relationship between maps and the truth. We expect maps not to lie, but maps have misled, propagandized or at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cartography"","block_context":{"text":"Cartography","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/cartography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1787744,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2019\/09\/a-defilement-of-a-sacred-trust\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789027,"position":2},"title":"‘A Defilement of a Sacred Trust’","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"18 September 2019","format":"link","excerpt":"I hadn\u2019t planned on posting anything about Trump\u2019s Sharpie-adjusted hurricane forecast map: there was nothing useful for me to add to the discussion, and presumably you\u2019d all heard about it already and didn\u2019t need me to tell you. But it turns out something map-related can, and has, been said about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Weather and Climate"","block_context":{"text":"Weather and Climate","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/weather-and-climate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1167,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/03\/when-maps-lie\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789027,"position":3},"title":"When Maps Lie","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"10 March 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"Andrew Wiseman's \"When Maps Lie\" was posted on CityLab last year, but its importance is evergreen: it's about map literacy, and how to avoid being fooled by confusing, misleading or simply bad maps. This is very much what Mark Monmonier did in\u00a0How to Lie with Maps\u00a0(see my review;\u00a0Amazon,\u00a0iBooks); Wiseman updates\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cartography"","block_context":{"text":"Cartography","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/cartography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1787838,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2019\/09\/monmoniers-latest-connections-and-content\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789027,"position":4},"title":"Monmonier’s Latest: Connections and Content","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"30 September 2019","format":"link","excerpt":"Mark Monmonier\u2019s latest book,\u00a0Connections and Content: Reflections on Networks and the History of Cartography (Esri Press, August ebook\/September paperback) is about \u201cthe relationships between networks and maps\u201d\u2014what does that mean? Apparently: triangulation networks, postal networks, telegraph networks survey networks, astronomical observations and other underlying data. Steven Seegel interviews Monmonier about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Surveying"","block_context":{"text":"Surveying","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/surveying\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/connections-content-monmonier-243x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":534,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/01\/adventures-in-academic-cartography\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789027,"position":5},"title":"Adventures in Academic Cartography","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"26 January 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Pulling back the academic veil can be fascinating. I remember one day 25 years ago in my first year of university, when my\u00a0history professor paused to tell us about his current research project (a biography of an early 20th-century French politician). For a half hour he held the class rapt\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Book Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Book Reviews","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/book-reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"monmonier-adventures","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/monmonier-adventures-188x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1789027"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1789037,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789027\/revisions\/1789037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1789027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1789027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1789027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}