Map Monday: When Headlines Deceive
David Cunningham
Maxar: DigitalGlobe, SSL, and Radiant Solutions are now one Maxar!
I was so excited for Map Monday when I saw the headline in Fast Company this week: "This map of 50 cities where adults still live with their parents is super depressing." And while I have two adult sons who are currently living with me (one finishing his graduated degree (thesis defense today!) and one just graduated and his first job out of college is literally 5 minutes from our house) quite frankly, I don't find that depressing. But I was depressed when I saw the map. Okay, in reality going back to Cartography 101, it really doesn't qualify as a map. (e.g. Where's the title, the north arrow, the scale, etc.)
What do the colors mean, what cities are highlighted? You would think putting 50 city names on a map of the United States could be doable. So I ended up with more questions than answers... which is great for art, maybe not so good for a map.
The Fast Company article said "[Image: courtesy of MagnifyMoney]" so a quick search quickly led me to the original source a MagnifyMoney.com blog "Places Where Adults Still Live With Their Parents." Guess what, the map was the same! The good news is that they actually had a table with the data and they did a nice job describing the methodology. So the darker the dot, the higher the percentage of adults aged 25-40 who live with their parents. (If you are really interested, Riverside California was #1 on the list, in the middle of the list was Buffalo and San Jose were tied at #24, Virginia Beach was #25 and Minneapolis was #50.)
In this world where clickbait rules the headlines, you'd think we'd be a little smarter or maybe we'd learn that the story (or map) behind the headline is never quite as good as our imaginations. For #MapMonday I usually like to celebrate great maps, maps I find incredibly interesting, but sometimes, like today, it's more about what could have been. The silver lining is that the data behind the map is interesting, just make your own map! (And don't forget to make it easy for your readers to understand (things like legends, titles, projection, labels all matter!)
Oh, and by the way, I hope my headline didn't deceive you!