[Sigia-l] information in cartography symbols

[Ruth Kaufman]

Jan,

Check out Part 2 of Alan MacEachren's book, How Maps Work. This part is 
called 'How Maps Are Imbued with Meaning'. It's fairly academic and not 
a bad introduction to semiotics.

In any case, I'll also take a crack at your question. Have you 
considered a different kind of symbology to represent your second data 
set? Instead of adding more symbols to a map, how about shading a 
region with a color or pattern, for example. It really depends on the 
nature of the information you're trying to represent. Generally 
speaking you can use symbologies of many sorts:
- points (symbols are highly abstract, icons are more pictorial) (0 
dimensions)
- lines (1 dimension)
- areas (2 dimensions)
- aggregations of symbols (3 dimensions)
- relief shading (3 dimensions)
- replicant maps or animations to show change over time (multiple 
dimensions)
- language (labels, callouts, etc.)
- accompanying charts & graphs
- others...

You can also modify your data and derive new sets of values that are 
easier to show on a map. For example, if you're showing information 
about the population of an area relative a pollution index of some 
sort, you might be able to derive a value such as the ratio of air 
quality degradation to population change over a 10 year period or 
something like that. Then you only have to map one data set instead of 
two. I'm just pulling this out of my hat, and not sure if it is at all 
relevant. Let me know if you have any more specific questions.

HTH,
Ruth

On Tuesday, December 2, 2003, at 08:38 AM, Jursa, Jan (init) wrote:

>
>> Hi list,
>>
>> i am looking for theories and concepts regarding symbols used in
>> cartography.
>>
>> i have questions like:
>> many maps present information about quantity by scaling a distinct 
>> symbol.
>> obviously this can become a problem when one has to combine different
>> symbols which are in close neighborhood.
>> wouldn't it be better to keep the size of an symbol constant but alter
>> instead it's "decoration" (that is, one could have a simple box, a box
>> with one star, a box with two stars...)  ?
>>
>> cheers from berlin,
>>
>> jan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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