Choropleth mapping

Principles

Choropleth maps play a prominent role in geographic data science as they allow us to display non-geographic attributes or variables on a geographic map. The word choropleth stems from the root "choro", meaning "region". As such choropleth maps represent data at the region level, and are appropriate for areal unit data where each observation combines a value of an attribute and a geometric figure, usually a polygon. Choropleth maps derive from an earlier era where cartographers faced technological constraints that precluded the use of unclassed maps where each unique attribute value could be represented by a distinct symbol or color. Instead, attribute values were grouped into a smaller number of classes, usually not more than 12. Each class was associated with a unique symbol that was in turn applied to all observations with attribute values falling in the class.

Although today these technological constraints are no longer binding, and unclassed mapping is feasible, there are still good reasons for adopting a classed approach. Chief among these is to reduce the cognitive load involved in parsing the complexity of an unclassed map. A choropleth map reduces this complexity by drawing upon statistical and visualization theory to provide an effective representation of the spatial distribution of the attribute values across the areal units.

The effectiveness of a choropleth map will be a function of the choice of classification scheme together with the color or symbolization strategy adopted. In broad terms, the classification scheme defines the number of classes as well as the rules for assignment, while the symbolization should convey information about the value differentiation across the classes.

In this chapter we first discuss the approaches used to classify attribute values. This is followed by an overview of color theory and the implications of different color schemes for effective map design. We combine theory and practice by exploring how these concepts are implemented in different Python packages, including geopandas, and PySAL.

%matplotlib inline

import seaborn
import pandas
import geopandas
import pysal
import numpy
import mapclassify
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


Quantitative data classification

Data classification considers the problem of partitioning the attribute values into mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups. The precise manner in which this is done will be a function of the measurement scale of the attribute in question. For quantitative attributes (ordinal, interval, ratio scales) the classes will have an explicit ordering. More formally, the classification problem is to define class boundaries such that $$c_j < y_i \le c_{j+1} \ \forall y_i \in C_{j}$$ where $y_i$ is the value of the attribute for spatial location $i$, $j$ is a class index, and $c_j$ represents the lower bound of interval $j$.

Different classification schemes obtain from their definition of the class boundaries. The choice of the classification scheme should take into consideration the statistical distribution of the attribute values.

To illustrate these considerations, we will examine regional income data for the 32 Mexican states. The variable we focus on is per capita gross domestic product for 1940 (PCGDP1940):

mx = geopandas.read_file("../data/mexicojoin.shp")

NAME PCGDP1940
0 Baja California Norte 22361.0
1 Baja California Sur 9573.0
2 Nayarit 4836.0
3 Jalisco 5309.0
4 Aguascalientes 10384.0

Which displays the following statistical distribution:

h = seaborn.distplot(mx['PCGDP1940'], bins=5, rug=True);


As we can see, the distribution is positively skewed as in common in regional income studies. In other words, the mean exceeds the median (50%, in the table below), leading the to fat right tail in the figure. As we shall see, this skewness will have implications for the choice of choropleth classification scheme.

mx['PCGDP1940'].describe()

count       32.000000
mean      7230.531250
std       5204.952883
min       1892.000000
25%       3701.750000
50%       5256.000000
75%       8701.750000
max      22361.000000
Name: PCGDP1940, dtype: float64

For quantitative attributes we first sort the data by their value, such that $x_0 \le x_2 \ldots \le x_{n-1}$. For a prespecified number of classes $k$, the classification problem boils down to selection of $k-1$ break points along the sorted values that separate the values into mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups.

In fact, the determination of the histogram above can be viewed as one approach to this selection. The method seaborn.distplot uses the matplotlib hist function under the hood to determine the class boundaries and the counts of observations in each class. In the figure, we have five classes which can be extracted with an explicit call to the hist function:

counts, bins, patches = h.hist(mx['PCGDP1940'], bins=5)


The counts object captures how many observations each category in the classification has:

counts

array([17.,  9.,  3.,  1.,  2.])

The bin object stores these break points we are interested in when considering classification schemes (the patches object can be ignored in this context, as it stores the geometries of the histogram plot):

bins

array([ 1892. ,  5985.8, 10079.6, 14173.4, 18267.2, 22361. ])

This yields 5 bins, with the first having a lower bound of 1892 and an upper bound of 5985.8 which contains 17 observations. The determination of the interval width ($w$) and the number of bins in seaborn is based on the Freedman-Diaconis rule:

$$w = 2 * IQR * n^{-1/3}$$

where $IQR$ is the inter quartile range of the attribute values. Given $w$ the number of bins ($k$) is:

$$k=(max- min)/w.$$

Below we present several approaches to create these break points that follow criteria that can be of interest in different contexts, as they focus on different priorities.

Equal Intervals

The Freedman-Diaconis approach provides a rule to determine the width and, in turn, the number of bins for the classification. This is a special case of a more general classifier known as "equal intervals", where each of the bins has the same width in the value space. For a given value of $k$, equal intervals classification splits the range of the attribute space into $k$ equal length intervals, with each interval having a width $w = \frac{x_0 - x_{n-1}}{k}$. Thus the maximum class is $(x_{n-1}-w, x_{n-1}]$ and the first class is $(-\infty, x_{n-1} - (k-1)w]$.

Equal intervals have the dual advantages of simplicity and ease of interpretation. However, this rule only considers the extreme values of the distribution and, in some cases, this can result in one or more classes being sparse. This is clearly the case in our income dataset, as the majority of the values are placed into the first two classes leaving the last three classes rather sparse:

ei5 = mapclassify.EqualInterval(mx['PCGDP1940'], k=5)
ei5

EqualInterval

Interval         Count
----------------------------
[ 1892.00,  5985.80] |    17
( 5985.80, 10079.60] |     9
(10079.60, 14173.40] |     3
(14173.40, 18267.20] |     1
(18267.20, 22361.00] |     2

Note that each of the intervals, however, has equal width of $w=4093.8$. This value of $k=5$ also coincides with the default classification in the Seaborn histogram displayed in Figure 1. It should also be noted that the first class is closed on the lower bound, in contrast to the general approach defined in Equation (1).

Quantiles

To avoid the potential problem of sparse classes, the quantiles of the distribution can be used to identify the class boundaries. Indeed, each class will have approximately $\mid\frac{n}{k}\mid$ observations using the quantile classifier. If $k=5$ the sample quintiles are used to define the upper limits of each class resulting in the following classification:

q5 = mapclassify.Quantiles(mx.PCGDP1940, k=5)
q5

Quantiles

Interval         Count
----------------------------
[ 1892.00,  3576.20] |     7
( 3576.20,  4582.80] |     6
( 4582.80,  6925.20] |     6
( 6925.20,  9473.00] |     6
( 9473.00, 22361.00] |     7

Note that while the numbers of values in each class are roughly equal, the widths of the first four intervals are rather different:

q5.bins[1:]-q5.bins[:-1]

array([ 1006.6,  2342.4,  2547.8, 12888. ])

While quantiles does avoid the pitfall of sparse classes, this classification is not problem free. The varying widths of the intervals can be markedly different which can lead to problems of interpretation. A second challenge facing quantiles arises when there are a large number of duplicate values in the distribution such that the limits for one or more classes become ambiguous. For example, if one had a variable with $n=20$ but 10 of the observations took on the same value which was the minimum observed, then for values of $k>2$, the class boundaries become ill-defined since a simple rule of splitting at the $n/k$ ranked observed value would depend upon how ties are treated when ranking.

numpy.random.seed(12345)
x = numpy.random.randint(0,10,20)
x[0:10] = x.min()
x

array([0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9, 7, 6, 0, 2, 9, 1, 2, 6, 7])
ties = mapclassify.Quantiles(x, k=5)
ties

Quantiles

Interval     Count
--------------------
[0.00, 0.00] |    11
(0.00, 1.40] |     1
(1.40, 6.20] |     4
(6.20, 9.00] |     4
x

array([0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9, 7, 6, 0, 2, 9, 1, 2, 6, 7])
ux = numpy.unique(x)

ux

array([0, 1, 2, 6, 7, 9])

In this case, mapclassify will issue a warning alerting the user to the issue that this sample does not contain enough unique values to form the number of well-defined classes requested. It then forms a lower number of classes using pseudo quantiles, or quantiles defined on the unique values in the sample, and then uses the pseudo quantiles to classify all the values.

np = numpy
import scipy.stats as stats

k = 5
w = 100.0 / k
p = np.arange(w, 100+w, w)
p

array([ 20.,  40.,  60.,  80., 100.])
q = np.array([stats.scoreatpercentile(x, pct) for pct in p])
q

array([0. , 0. , 1.4, 6.2, 9. ])
np.array([stats.scoreatpercentile(x, pct) for pct in np.arange(20, 120, 20)])

array([0. , 0. , 1.4, 6.2, 9. ])
p

array([ 20.,  40.,  60.,  80., 100.])

Mean-standard deviation

Our third classifer uses the sample mean $\bar{x} = \frac{1}{n} \sum_{i=1}^n x_i$ and sample standard deviation $s = \sqrt{ \frac{1}{n-1} \sum_{i=1}^n (x_i - \bar{x}) }$ to define class boundaries as some distance from the sample mean, with the distance being a multiple of the standard deviation. For example, a common definition for $k=5$ is to set the upper limit of the first class to two standard deviations ($c_{0}^u = \bar{x} - 2 s$), and the intermediate classes to have upper limits within one standard deviation ($c_{1}^u = \bar{x}-s,\ c_{2}^u = \bar{x}+s, \ c_{3}^u = \bar{x}+2s$). Any values greater (smaller) than two standard deviations above (below) the mean are placed into the top (bottom) class.

msd = mapclassify.StdMean(mx['PCGDP1940'])
msd

StdMean

Interval         Count
----------------------------
(    -inf, -3179.37] |     0
(-3179.37,  2025.58] |     1
( 2025.58, 12435.48] |    28
(12435.48, 17640.44] |     0
(17640.44, 22361.00] |     3

This classifier is best used when data is normally distributed or, at least, when the sample mean is a meaningful measure to anchor the classification around. Clearly this is not the case for our income data as the positive skew results in a loss of information when we use the standard deviation. The lack of symmetry leads to an inadmissible upper bound for the first class as well as a concentration of the vast majority of values in the middle class.

Maximum Breaks

The maximum breaks classifier decides where to set the break points between classes by considering the difference between sorted values. That is, rather than considering a value of the dataset in itself, it looks at how appart each value is from the next one in the sorted sequence. The classifier then places the the $k-1$ break points in between the pairs of values most stretched apart from each other in the entire sequence, proceeding in descending order relative to the size of the breaks:

mb5 = mapclassify.MaximumBreaks(mx['PCGDP1940'], k=5)
mb5

MaximumBreaks

Interval         Count
----------------------------
[ 1892.00,  5854.00] |    17
( 5854.00, 11574.00] |    11
(11574.00, 14974.00] |     1
(14974.00, 19890.50] |     1
(19890.50, 22361.00] |     2

Maximum breaks is an appropriate approach when we are interested in making sure observations in each class are separated from those in neighboring classes. As such, it works well in cases where the distribution of values is not unimodal. In addition, the algorithm is relatively fast to compute. However, its simplicitly can sometimes cause unexpected results. To the extent in only considers the top $k-1$ differences between consecutive values, other more nuanced within-group differences and dissimilarities can be ignored.

Box-Plot

The box-plot classification is a blend of the quantile and standard deviation classifiers. Here $k$ is predefined to six, with the upper limit of class 0 set to $q_{0.25}-h \, IQR$. $IQR = q_{0.75}-q_{0.25}$ is the inter-quartile range; $h$ corresponds to the hinge, or the multiplier of the $IQR$ to obtain the bounds of the whiskers. The lower limit of the sixth class is set to $q_{0.75}+h \, IQR$. Intermediate classes have their upper limits set to the 0.25, 0.50 and 0.75 percentiles of the attribute values.

bp = mapclassify.BoxPlot(mx['PCGDP1940'])
bp

BoxPlot

Interval         Count
----------------------------
(    -inf, -3798.25] |     0
(-3798.25,  3701.75] |     8
( 3701.75,  5256.00] |     8
( 5256.00,  8701.75] |     8
( 8701.75, 16201.75] |     5
(16201.75, 22361.00] |     3

Any values falling into either of the extreme classes are defined as outlers. Note that because the income values are non-negative by definition, the lower outlier class has an inadmissible upper bound meaning that lower outliers would not be possible for this sample.

The default value for the hinge is $h=1.5$ in PySAL. However, this can be specified by the user for an alternative classification:

bp1 = mapclassify.BoxPlot(mx['PCGDP1940'], hinge=1)
bp1

BoxPlot

Interval         Count
----------------------------
(    -inf, -1298.25] |     0
(-1298.25,  3701.75] |     8
( 3701.75,  5256.00] |     8
( 5256.00,  8701.75] |     8
( 8701.75, 13701.75] |     5
(13701.75, 22361.00] |     3

Doing so will affect the definition of the outlier classes, as well as the neighboring internal classes.

The head tail algorithm, introduced by Jiang (2013), is based on a recursive partioning of the data using splits around iterative means. The splitting process continues until the distributions within each of the classes no longer display a heavy-tailed distribution in the sense that there is a balance between the number of smaller and larger values assigned to each class.

ht = mapclassify.HeadTailBreaks(mx['PCGDP1940'])
ht

HeadTailBreaks

Interval         Count
----------------------------
[ 1892.00,  7230.53] |    20
( 7230.53, 12244.42] |     9
(12244.42, 20714.00] |     1
(20714.00, 22163.00] |     1
(22163.00, 22361.00] |     1

For data with a heavy-tailed distribution, such as power law and log normal distributions, the head tail breaks classifier (Jiang 2015) can be particularly effective.

Jenks Caspall

This approach, as well as the following two, tackles the calssification challenge from a heuristic perspective, rather than from deterministic one. Originally proposed by Jenks & Caspall (1971), this algorithm aims to minimize the sum of absolute deviations around class means. The approach begins with a prespecified number of classes and an arbitrary initial set of class breaks - for example using quintiles. The algorithm attempts to improve the objective function by considering the movement of observations between adjacent classes. For example, the largest value in the lowest quintile would be considered for movement into the second quintile, while the lowest value in the second quintile would be considered for a possible move into the first quintile. The candidate move resulting in the largest reduction in the objective function would be made, and the process continues until no other improving moves are possible.

numpy.random.seed(12345)
jc5 = mapclassify.JenksCaspall(mx['PCGDP1940'], k=5)
jc5

JenksCaspall

Interval         Count
----------------------------
[ 1892.00,  2934.00] |     4
( 2934.00,  4414.00] |     9
( 4414.00,  6399.00] |     5
( 6399.00, 12132.00] |    11
(12132.00, 22361.00] |     3

Fisher Jenks

The second optimal algorithm adopts a dynamic programming approach to minimize the sum of the absolute deviations around class medians. In contrast to the Jenks-Caspall approach, Fisher-Jenks is guaranteed to produce an optimal classification for a prespecified number of classes:

numpy.random.seed(12345)
fj5 = mapclassify.FisherJenks(mx['PCGDP1940'], k=5)
fj5

FisherJenks

Interval         Count
----------------------------
[ 1892.00,  5309.00] |    17
( 5309.00,  9073.00] |     8
( 9073.00, 12132.00] |     4
(12132.00, 17816.00] |     1
(17816.00, 22361.00] |     2

Max-p

Finally, the max-p classifiers adopts the algorithm underlying the max-p region building method (Duque, Anselin and Rey, 2012) to the case of map classification. It is similar in spirit to Jenks Caspall in that it considers greedy swapping between adjacent classes to improve the objective function. It is a heuristic, however, so unlike Fisher-Jenks, there is no optimial solution guaranteed:

mp5 = mapclassify.MaxP(mx['PCGDP1940'], k=5)
mp5

MaxP

Interval         Count
----------------------------
[ 1892.00,  3569.00] |     7
( 3569.00,  5309.00] |    10
( 5309.00,  7990.00] |     5
( 7990.00, 10384.00] |     5
(10384.00, 22361.00] |     5

Comparing Classification schemes

As a special case of clustering, the definition of the number of classes and the class boundaries pose a problem to the map designer. Recall that the Freedman-Diaconis rule was said to be optimal, however, the optimality necessitates the specification of an objective function. In the case of Freedman-Diaconis, the objective function is to minimize the difference between the area under estimated kernel density based on the sample and the area under the theoretical population distribution that generated the sample.

This notion of statistical fit is an important one. However, it is not the only consideration when evaluating classifiers for the purpose of choropleth mapping. Also relevant is the spatial distribution of the attribute values and the ability of the classifier to convey a sense of that spatial distribution. As we shall see, this is not necessarily directly related to the statistical distribution of the attribute values. We will return to a joint consideration of both the statistical and spatial distribution of the attribute values in comparison of classifiers below.

For map classification, one optimiality criterion that can be used is a measure of fit. In PySAL the "absolute deviation around class medians" (ADCM) is calculated and provides a measure of fit that allows for comparison of alternative classifiers for the same value of $k$.

To see this, we can compare different classifiers for $k=5$ on the Mexico data:

class5 = q5, ei5, ht, mb5, msd, fj5, jc5
fits = numpy.array([ c.adcm for c in class5])
data = pandas.DataFrame(fits)
data['classifier'] = [c.name for c in class5]


As is to be expected, the Fisher-Jenks classifier dominates all other k=5 classifiers with an ACDM of 23,729. Interestingly, the equal interval classifier performs well despite the problems associated with being sensitive to the extreme values in the distribution. The mean-standard deviation classifier has a very poor fit due to the skewed nature of the data and the concentrated assignment of the majority of the observations to the central class.

The ADCM provides a global measure of fit which can be used to compare the alternative classifiers. As a complement to this global perspective, it can be revealing to consider how each of the spatial observations was classified across the alternative approaches. To do this we can add the class bin attribute (yb) generated by the PySAL classifiers as additional columns in the data frame and present these jointly in a table:

mx['q540'] = q5.yb
mx['ei540'] = ei5.yb
mx['ht40'] = ht.yb
mx['mb540'] = mb5.yb
mx['msd40'] = msd.yb
mx['fj540'] = fj5.yb
mx['jc540'] = jc5.yb

mxs = mx.sort_values('PCGDP1940')

def highlight_values(val):
if val==0:
return 'background-color: %s' % '#ffffff'
elif val==1:
return 'background-color: %s' % '#e0ffff'
elif val==2:
return 'background-color: %s' % '#b3ffff'
elif val==3:
return 'background-color: %s' % '#87ffff'
elif val==4:
return 'background-color: %s' % '#62e4ff'
else:
return ''

t = mxs[['NAME', 'PCGDP1940', 'q540', 'ei540', 'ht40', 'mb540', 'msd40', 'fj540', 'jc540']]
t.style.applymap(highlight_values)

NAME PCGDP1940 q540 ei540 ht40 mb540 msd40 fj540 jc540
19 Oaxaca 1892 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
18 Guerrero 2181 0 0 0 0 2 0 0
20 Tabasco 2459 0 0 0 0 2 0 0
21 Chiapas 2934 0 0 0 0 2 0 0
8 Michoacan de Ocampo 3327 0 0 0 0 2 0 1
9 Mexico 3408 0 0 0 0 2 0 1
15 Puebla 3569 0 0 0 0 2 0 1
17 Tlaxcala 3605 1 0 0 0 2 0 1
27 Zacatecas 3734 1 0 0 0 2 0 1
14 Campeche 3758 1 0 0 0 2 0 1
5 Guanajuato 4359 1 0 0 0 2 0 1
28 San Luis Potosi 4372 1 0 0 0 2 0 1
7 Hidalgo 4414 1 0 0 0 2 0 1
2 Nayarit 4836 2 0 0 0 2 0 2
25 Sinaloa 4840 2 0 0 0 2 0 2
31 Veracruz-Llave 5203 2 0 0 0 2 0 2
3 Jalisco 5309 2 0 0 0 2 0 2
22 Sonora 6399 2 1 0 1 2 1 2
11 Colima 6909 2 1 0 1 2 1 3
12 Morelos 6936 3 1 0 1 2 1 3
30 Tamaulipas 7508 3 1 1 1 2 1 3
13 Yucatan 7990 3 1 1 1 2 1 3
24 Coahuila De Zaragoza 8537 3 1 1 1 2 1 3
23 Chihuahua 8578 3 1 1 1 2 1 3
29 Nuevo Leon 9073 3 1 1 1 2 1 3
1 Baja California Sur 9573 4 1 1 1 2 2 3
4 Aguascalientes 10384 4 2 1 1 2 2 3
6 Queretaro de Arteaga 11016 4 2 1 1 2 2 3
26 Durango 12132 4 2 1 2 2 2 3
10 Distrito Federal 17816 4 3 2 3 4 3 4
16 Quintana Roo 21965 4 4 3 4 4 4 4
0 Baja California Norte 22361 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
# write table out to tex
with open('classtable.tex', 'w') as out:
t.to_latex(out)


Inspection of this table reveals a number of interesting results. First, the only Mexican state that is treated consistantly across the k=5 classifiers is Baja California Norte which is placed in the highest class by all classifiers. Second, the mean-standard deviation classifier has an empty first class due to the inadmissible upper bound and the overconcentration of values in the central class (2).

Finally, we can consider a meso-level view of the clasification results by comparing the number of values assigned to each class across the different classifiers:

pandas.DataFrame({c.name: c.counts for c in class5},
index=['Class-{}'.format(i) for i in range(5)])

Quantiles EqualInterval HeadTailBreaks MaximumBreaks StdMean FisherJenks JenksCaspall
Class-0 7 17 20 17 0 17 4
Class-1 6 9 9 11 1 8 9
Class-2 6 3 1 1 28 4 5
Class-3 6 1 1 1 0 1 11
Class-4 7 2 1 2 3 2 3

Doing so highlights the similarities between Fisher Jenks and equal intervals as the distribution counts are very similar as the two approaches agree on all 17 states assigned to the first class. Indeed, the only observation that distinguishes the two classifiers is the treatment of Baja California Sur which is kept in class 1 in equal intervals, but assigned to class 2 by Fisher Jenks.

Color

Having considered the evaluation of the statisitcal distribution of the attribute values and the alternative classification approaches, the next step is to select the symbolization and color scheme. Together with the choice of classifier, these will determine the overall effectiveness of the choropleth map in representing the spatial distribution of the attribute values.

Let us start by refreshing the mx object and exploring the base polygons for the Mexican states:

mx = geopandas.read_file('../data/mexicojoin.shp')
f, ax = plt.subplots(1, figsize=(9, 9))
mx.plot(ax=ax, color='blue', edgecolor='grey')
ax.set_axis_off()
ax.set_title('Mexican States')
plt.axis('equal')
plt.show()


Prior to examining the attribute values it is important to note that the spatial units for these states are far from homogenous in their shapes and sizes. This can have major impacts on our brain's pattern recognition capabilities as we tend to be drawn to the larger polygons. Yet, when we considered the statistical distribution above, each observation was given equal weight. Thus, the spatial distribution becomes more complicated to evaluate from a visual and statistical perspective.

With this qualification in mind, we will explore the construction of choropleth maps using geopandas:

mx = geopandas.read_file('../data/mexicojoin.shp')
f, ax = plt.subplots(1, figsize=(9, 9))
mx.plot(ax=ax, column='PCGDP1940', legend=True, scheme='Quantiles')
ax.set_axis_off()
ax.set_title('PCGDP1940')
plt.axis('equal')
plt.show()


Note that the default for the legend is two report two decimal places. If we desire, this can be changed by overriding the fmt parameter:

f, ax = plt.subplots(1, figsize=(9, 9))
mx.plot(ax=ax, column='PCGDP1940', legend=True, scheme='Quantiles', fmt='{:.0f}')
ax.set_axis_off()
ax.set_title('PCGDP1940')
plt.axis('equal')
plt.show()


The default color map used by geopandas is viridis, which is a multi-hue sequential scheme, with the darker (ligher) hues representing lower (higher) values for the attribute in question. The choice of a color scheme for a choropleth map should be based on the type of variable underconsideration. Generally, a distinction is drawn between three types of numerical attributues:

• sequential
• diverging
• qualitative

Sequential Color Schemes

Our attribute is measured in dollars and is characterized as a sequential attribute. To choose an appropriate sequential scheme we can override the cmap parameter:

f, ax = plt.subplots(1, figsize=(9, 9))
mx.plot(ax=ax, column='PCGDP1940', legend=True, scheme='Quantiles', fmt='{:.0f}', \
cmap='Blues')
ax.set_axis_off()
ax.set_title('PCGDP1940')
plt.axis('equal')
plt.show()


which now uses a single-hue sequent,ial color map with the lighter shades representing lower values. One difficulty with this map is that the poor states in the southern portion of Mexico blend into the background of the map display. This can be adjusted by overriding the edgecolor:

f, ax = plt.subplots(1, figsize=(9, 9))
mx.plot(ax=ax, column='PCGDP1940', legend=True, scheme='Quantiles', fmt='{:.0f}', \
cmap='Blues', edgecolor='k')
ax.set_axis_off()
ax.set_title('PCGDP1940')
plt.axis('equal')
plt.show()


Diverging Color Schemes

A slightly different type of attribute is the so-called "diverging" values attribute. This is useful when one wishes to place equal emphasis on mid-range critical values as well as extremes at both ends of the distribution. Light colors are used to emphasize the mid-range class while dark colors with contrasting hues are used to distinguish the low and high extremes.

To illustrate this for the Mexican income data we can derive a new variable which measures the change in a state's rank in the income distribution between 1940 to 2000:

rnk = mx.rank(ascending=False) # ascending ranks 1=high, n=lowest
rnk['NAME']=mx['NAME']
delta_rnk = rnk.PCGDP1940 - rnk.PCGDP2000
delta_rnk
cls = numpy.digitize(delta_rnk, [-5, 0, 5, 20])
cls

array([1, 1, 0, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 4, 3, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 1,
2, 2, 2, 1, 0, 0, 2, 3, 2, 0])

Here we have created four classes for the rank changes: [-inf, -5), [-5, 0), [0, 5), [5, 20]. Note that these are descending ranks, so the wealthiest state in any period has a rank of 1 and therefore when considering the change in ranks, a negative change reflects moving down the income distribution.

f, ax = plt.subplots(1, figsize=(9, 9))
mx.assign(cl=cls).plot(ax=ax, column='cl', categorical=True, cmap='RdYlBu',
scheme='equal_interval', k=4)
ax.set_axis_off()
ax.set_title('PCGDP1940')
plt.axis('equal')
plt.show()


Here the red (blue) hues are states that have moved downwards (upwards) in the income distribution, with the darker hue representing a larger movement.

Qualitative Color Schemes

The Mexico data set also has several variables that are on a nominal measurement scale. One of these is a region definition variable that groups individual states in contiguous clusters of similar characteristics:

mx['HANSON98'].head()

0    1.0
1    2.0
2    2.0
3    3.0
4    2.0
Name: HANSON98, dtype: float64

This regionalization scheme partions Mexico into 5 regions. A naive (and incorrect) way to display this would be to treat the region variable as sequential and use a UserDefined classifier to display the regions:

import numpy as np
h5 = mapclassify.UserDefined(mx['HANSON98'], bins=np.arange(1,6).tolist())
h5.fmt = '{:.0f}'
h5

UserDefined

Interval   Count
----------------
[1, 1] |     6
(1, 2] |     7
(2, 3] |    10
(3, 4] |     2
(4, 5] |     7
_ = h5.plot(mx, axis_on=False)


This is not correct because the region variable is not on an interval scale, so the differences between the values have no quantitative significance but rather the values simply indicate region membership. However, the choropleth above gives a clear visual cue that regions in the south have larger values than those in the north, as the color map implies an intensity gradient.

A more appropriate visualization is to use a "qualitative" color palette:

_ = h5.plot(mx, cmap='Pastel1', axis_on=False)


Conclusion

In this chapter we have considered the construction of choropleth maps for spatial data visualization. The key issues of the choice of classification scheme, variable measurement scale, spatial configuration and color palettes were illustrated using PySAL's map classification module together with other related packages in the PyData stack.

Choropleth maps are a central tool in the geographic data science arsenal as they provide powerful visualizations of the spatial distribution of attribute values. We have only touched on the basic concepts in this chapter, as there is much more that can be said about cartographic theory and the design of effective choropleth maps. Readers interested in pursuing this literature are encouraged to see the references cited.

At the same time, given the philosophy underlying PySAL the methods we cover here are sufficient for exploratory data analysis where the rapid and flexible generation of views is critical to the work flow. Once the analysis is complete, and the final presentation quality maps are to be generated, there are excellent packages in the data stack that the user can turn to.

Questions

1. A variable such as population density measured for census tracts in a metropolitan area can display a high degree of skewness. What is an appropriate choice for a choropleth classification for such a variable?
2. Provide two solutions to the problem of ties when applying quantile classification to the following series: $y=[2,2,2,2,2,2,4,7,8,9,20,21]$ and $k=4$. Discuss the merits of each approach.
3. Which classifiers are appropriate for data that displays a high degree of multi-modality in its statistical distribution?
4. Contrast and compare classed choropleth maps with class-less choropleth maps? What are the strengths and limitations of each type of visualization for spatial data?
5. In what ways do choropleth classifiers treat intra-class and inter-class heterogeneity differently? What are the implications of these choices?
6. To what extent do most commonly employed choropleth classification methods take the geographical distribution of the variable into consideration? Can you think of ways to incorporate the spatial features of a variable into a classification?
7. Discuss the similarities between the choice of the number of classes in choropleth mapping, on the one hand, and the determination of the number of clusters in a data set on the other. What aspects of choropleth mapping differentiate the former from the latter?
8. The Fisher-Jenks classifier will always dominate other k-classifiers for a given data set, with respect to statistical fit. Given this, why might one decide on choosing a different k-classifier for a particular data set?

References

Duque, J.C., L. Anselin, and S.J. Rey. (2012) "The max-p regions problem." Journal of Regional Science, 52:397-419.

Jenks, G. F., & Caspall, F. C. (1971). Error on choroplethic maps: definition, measurement, reduction. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 61(2), 217-244.

Jian, B. (2013) "Head/Tail Breaks: A New Classification Scheme for Data with a Heavy-Tailed Distribution." The Professional Geographer, 65(3): 482-494.

Jiang, Bin. (2015) "Head/tail breaks for visualization of city structure and dynamics." Cities, 43: 69-77.

Rey, S.J. and M.L. Guitierez. (2010) "Interregional inequality dynamics in Mexico." Spatial Economic Analysis, 5: 277-298.