Widespread Racial Diversity
Sharp Racial Differences
These two maps display the same data from the racial composition of students in the Hartford area for the 2009-2010 academic year. Both of the data visualizations are mathematically correct, in that they both represent the accurate data, but the two maps are designed differently which can lead viewers to have inaccurate perceptions of the data. The first map shows Hartford and its surrounding neighborhoods as racially diverse by displaying a large number of buckets that divide the data and by using a good range of colors to represent a wide variety of racial compositions. The second map is only divided into three ranges: 0.0-0.25, 0.25-0.75, and 0.75-1.0 and visually it looks like there are sharp racial differences. The color choice goes from the lightest color representing the range with the smallest percentage of minorities to the darkest color representing the range with the largest percentage of racial minorities which causes the viewer to immediately recognize the sharp racial differences by town.