caitlin gannon

I’m intrigued by the complexity of presenting statistics on a map, and in my research I’ve come across two compelling but different approaches to mapping crime data: Oakland Crimespotting and the LA Times Homicide Map.

Oakland Crimespotting

Created by Stamen Design, Oakland Crimespotting uses data from CrimeWatch, Oakland’s community mapping website. Crime reports are grouped by violent crimes, property crime, and “quality of life” crimes. Data on the map can be adjusted with a slider that is also a bar graph of recent crime reports.

A detail view (”Crime Reports”) offers more information about the nature of a crime and a close-up view of the location. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed for a specific geographic area.

The site puts crime information into the hands of the community, allowing residents to research and investigate patterns of activity, and to ask questions. As the site’s creators write, “As citizens we have a right to public information. A clear understanding of our environment is essential to an informed citizenry.”

Los Angeles Times Homicide Map

The LA Times Homicide Project by Jill Leovy combines homicide data from the LA County Coroner’s Office with original reporting. The filtering and user interface are stunning, and I can’t think of a better example of an information-rich data display.

Names and photos of the homicide victims are included next to the map. This humanizes the data in a powerful way, making it impossible to look at the map as just a warning about “dangerous” neighborhoods. There may be patterns to discover in the demographic and geographic information presented, but the tragic human side of the story makes it much more than just statistics. Sadly, new data (i.e. people) are added weekly.

Twitter is a strange entrant onto the social networking stage … I must admit I don’t really see the point. People share little 120-character bits of information about themselves (”just had a great burrito for lunch”, “waiting for my dad to pick me up”, etc.), and their friends — or complete strangers — can subscribe to and read them. I’m just not that interested in what kind of coffee someone in Michigan just ordered, or why a guy in Spain is waiting for a phone call.

However, I must admit to a surprising fascination with TwitterVision:

This mashup of twitter nonsense with Google Maps is actually sort of … well, reassuring. Somehow, plotting all these bits of trivia on a world map makes the continents seem like cozy neighbors, and the differences between us not so great. The more banal experiences of daily life are really rather similar (especially among the web-savvy set).

So, enjoy your latte, Michigan, and Spain-guy, I hope you get your phone call!