We started by comparing a few map visualization techniques. We covered the uses, benefits, and caveats of choropleth maps, cartograms, and dot density maps. We moved swiftly to the hexagon shape and explored how its geometrical properties can help choropleth and dot density maps.
Most of the chapter was, however, spent in the mapping workshop, building a hexbin map from scratch. We could have built a simple hexbin map, just covering areas with datapoints, but our goal was to shape a map entirely of hexagons for the kicks and the aesthetics. That meant a little more data preparation—creating a map-shaped layout grid, joining the datapoints, and eventually adding and color-encoding the hexagons—but doesn’t it look pretty?
Finally, we turned our static map into an interactive application, handing significant control over shape and information gain to...