Every time I fly from the East Coast to California, Colorado or Arizona, I notice this: the vast untamed wilderness of the American West. Vast farmland, mountain and desert landscapes and unspoilt beauty.

Flying into Aspen this Monday for a conference (I’ll post the deck later this week) and I was just blown away by how beautiful this remote, snow-capped mountain view is, unspoiled by human development.

Curiosity got the better of me, so I looked at population data.

The first thing I found was the interesting population map you see above, via map of Binik. Or more precisely, the lack of population maps. The green you see above represents nearly 5 million Census Bureau blocks with population = 0.

according to Census Bureau, nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population (about 64.4%) lives east of the Mississippi River, which occupies just over a third of the continental U.S. land area. Meaning, slightly more than 1/3 of the population lives on 2/3 of the land.

We always see maps depicting all kinds of things: job creation, wealth, tax revenue, consumption, partisanship, voting patterns. What many of these maps have in common is that they create a misleading picture of the country.

These are harmful subtle errors that color the model of the world around us. This is another cognitive error to watch out for.

Error correction aside, I hope to enjoy some beautiful scenery today…

Before:
America is purple, not red and blue (November 3, 2020)

Anecdote is the plural of data (February 4, 2019)

Mapping of the 2008 US Election Results (November 10, 2008)

Election polling cartography (November 2, 2008)