Not so much an update as a quick anecdote from vacation.
I was out bowling with some friends, and the bowling balls were color-coded by weight. 12lb was green, for example, 15lb purple, and yellow was 7 or 8lb, I believe. I immediately thought, “using color hue to encode weight is inappropriate here, as these are ordinal data! An orderable color scheme should be used, such as light to dark green!” This is how bad I have gotten, how deeply ingrained some of these things have become.
See also my friend Daniel’s comment on one of my earlier posts.
The preceding had nothing to do with maps, but I hope you will forgive my indulgence.
Hey Daniel,
No idea if this has a place on your website, but it’s an interesting story about maps, and I thought of you!!
http://www.edwatch.org/updates09/071709-mapsw.htm
http://johnmckay.blogspot.com/2009/07/intellectual-dishonesty-of-allan-quist.html
While not strictly about bad cartography, it’s about maps, and that’s good enough for me. Thanks!
Don’t feel bad about this; the people who wonder if and how applying their chosen study(s) to the world to improve it are the true ones.