Who killed the electric map?

I just found out today that Gettysburg National Military Park has disassembled and is in the process of replacing the battle ground electric map. You can read details about the map here, but in short it is a large model of the battlefield landscape with light bulbs, each controlled to turn on and off to show troop movements and activities during the battle.

Grid Systems, a brief introduction

Let there be grids

Outside of ZIP codes, there are other methods we like to utilize to map our data. One of these is the use of a grid of some arbitrary size over a large area. Many types of data can be mapped to a grid. Temperature, precipitation, elevation each lends themselves to grids due to their continuous nature over a surface. Sometimes other types of data are projected onto grids that are not necessarily continuous, population, geologic formations and income for instance. Grids are also useful for simply indicating locations of geographic features, and have most often been exploited historically for that purpose.

Mapping with Mr. ZIP

ZIP code areas and what they can (and can’t) do for you

I am often requested to map or facilitate the mapping of some data by ZIP code. The desired result is a thematic choropleth (or heat map) of sales/customer data for these ZIP code divisions . The request itself is not unreasonable, but filled with difficulties inherit to the nature and history of the US ZIP code system.

The problems mapping data by ZIP code areas ultimately originate with the idea that we live in a ZIP code. The very idea of a ZIP code area is ingrained in our minds as these static geographic units with definite boundaries that divide people into manageable groups-this concept even creeps in from pop-culture, ala Beverly Hills, 90210.