Cartogram

A cartogram is a thematic mapThematic MapA thematic map focuses on a specific subject or theme, such as population density, climate zones, or election results... in which geographic regions are deliberately distorted so that their area, distance, or shape corresponds to a statistical variable rather than true land area. The most common variant is the area cartogram, where each region is resized proportionally to a value like population, economic output, or election votes, making it immediately apparent which regions dominate the dataset. There are several cartogram types. Contiguous cartograms maintain shared borders while warping shapes, preserving a sense of geographic topologyTopologyTopology in GIS defines the spatial relationships between geographic features, including adjacency, connectivity, and.... Non-contiguous cartograms separate regions and resize them independently, sacrificing adjacency for clarity. Dorling cartograms replace regions entirely with circles or other symbols scaled by value. Each approach involves trade-offs between geographic recognizability and data legibility. Cartograms are widely used in political science for election mapping, in public health for disease prevalence visualization, and in economics for comparing national metrics. Tools such as QGISQGISQGIS is a user-friendly, open-source GIS platform that provides tools for geospatial data analysis, mapping, and inte... cartogram plugins, D3.js, and specialized software like ScapeToad automate the complex geometric computations required. While cartograms can initially disorient viewers accustomed to conventional maps, they are powerful for challenging assumptions based on physical size alone.