It turns out, according to the blog GIS Use in Public Health and Health Care, that each of the sins was assessed by a single proxy measure, and they chose rather shaky measures at that.* Gluttony was measured by the prevalence of fast-food restaurants, which will probably offend some of our most epicurean citizens. STD rates were taken as a measure of lust, rather than crappy sex ed - if you can stop to put on a condom, you just weren't horny enough, maybe. Pride was assessed by measuring the strength of all the other sins, which makes no sense at all - how many people do you know who are absolutely vain about their pious image?
So it's a lousy example of what can be done with data and a GIS program, but you can also see the possibilities in the methods.
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*I have to wonder why. If you're going to spend the time on a project like this, why do it in such an obviously half-assed way? It wouldn't have been much harder to combine a number of more applicable statistics.
I dunno. I don't see much in the way of trends for any of these maps, aside from population density distribution. Obviously, they have a poverty of good data.
ReplyDeleteOh, speaking of poverty, and maps, and data ... I made my first map today for data visualization class!
http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/usa-poverty-levels-2009-map
Was harder than it looks. Or maybe not, depending on who is looking, I guess.