Cougar relocated by Fish & Game from a cherry tree in Chelan, WA

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Wk 8 - Dot Density Map - Florida Housing Density

This map was created with Adobe Illustrator from an image provided.  This image wasn't of good quality and really needed the coastlines generalized so the complex geography wouldn't end up just a blur of ink. I was able to scale the image to 150 percent.  I tried to scale beyond that and crashed Ai everytime. 

I attempted to follow the lab instructions by taking the county with the highest housing density and adding as many dots as possible so dots just begin to coalesce.  The other requirement was all counties must have a dot if there is data.  Since, according to my calculations, Liberty County had 3.74 housing units per acre, the largest dot value couldn't exceed 3.74.  That meant 211 dots had to go into Pinelas County.  I wasn't close to fitting that many dots, so I copied and off set the four counties with the highest density and expanded them by 100 percent.  I also increased the dot size by 100 percent for those four counties.  This allowed me me fill the counties according to good dot density placement while still being able to see a single dot on the map.  Bi-focals didn't help this project.  There are 1807 dots on this map.

I chose to leave the three filters (wetlands, lakes, rivers) off my finished map.  I think the filters detracted from the finished map and made it difficult to see the pattern of the dots.  I'm glad this lab wasn't earlier in the semester--it definately made me feel like I earned a Spring Break.

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