Item — HN Reader

Your defense almost makes sense, but it still leaves out the fact that it grades from red to white, and blue to white, until it hits the middle -- at which point it suddenly turns purple.

To go with your defense, it should grade from red to purple between the highest point and the mean, and blue to purple between the lowest point and the mean.

1 comments

Well actually my whole second paragraph is about the purple :) The point of going from blue to white is to to visually convey that more pale colors mean 'closer to the baseline'. I.e., pale blue is 'slightly better than baseline', pale red 'slightly worse than baseline'. If you were to blend from blue to purple, that wouldn't work any more. But if you leave in the white in the middle, it looks as if there are 'no data' spots. Hence, use variation in intensities for non-baseline, different color for baseline.

Cartography is not about conceptual consistency, it's about conveying information. I challenge you to make a map that conveys the message better than the choices made in the map in the OP (apart from subjective wah wah like 'blue is democrats' as was laughably brought up elsewhere in this thread).

I sort of see that, but I don't understand why baseline (purple) needs to be set that much apart from slightly above (pink but almost white) or slightly below (blue but almost white), which are on completely different scales of color.

Or maybe I just don't understand how cartography works, but something about that still seems off.