Map 1: This map shows sharp racial divisions in the outlined towns of Connecticut.
Map 2: This map shows a more widespread racial diversity throughout the selected towns of Connecticut.
The two maps shown above are both interpretations of the same data, the percentage of minority students in the given towns of Connecticut in 2009-10. The maps look very different, however, because I have altered some of the percentage settings. Map 1 shows that the percentage of diversity is either heavily swayed one way or the other, that a town either has a very low percentage of minority students or a very high percentage of minority students (no in-between). This is due to there only being two options of shaded regions in the legend on the bottom right hand corner of the map. I purposely altered these percentages to only show 5-52.5% for the lightly shaded region, and 52.5-100% in the darker shaded region. These alterations made the map look significantly different than Map 2. The reason Map 2 shows much more racial diversity in the selected towns is because I allowed for there to be more of a variety of shaded regions in the legend on the bottom right hand corner of this map. In adding these “buckets” I was able to decrease the gap in between the percentages for each shaded region (i.e. leaving 10% of a gap for each “bucket” as opposed to nearly 50%). By decreasing the gap percentage for each shaded region the map allows one to interpret the data differently than Map 1 and shows more racial diversity, although both maps illustrate the same data.