Interactive Linked Micromap Plots for the Display of Geographically Referenced Statistical Data

Abstract

Over the last decade, researchers have developed many improvements to make statistical graphics more accessible to the general public. These improvements include making statistical summaries more visual and providing more information at the same time. Research in this area involved converting statistical tables into plots (Carr, 1994; Carr and Nusser, 1995), new ways of displaying geographically referenced data (Carr et al., 1992), and, inparticular, the developmentof linkedmicromap(LM)plots, often simply called micromaps (Carr and Pierson, 1996; Carr et al., 1998, 2000a). LM plots, initially called map row plots as well as linked map-attribute graphics, were first presented in a poster session sponsored by the American Statistical Association (ASA) Section on Statistical Graphics at the 1996 Joint Statistical Meetings (Olsen et al., 1996).More details on the history of LMplots and their connection to other research can be found in these early references on micromaps. More recent references on LM plots (Carr et al., 2000b; Carr, 2001) focused on their use for communicating summary data from health and environmental studies.