Do you ever feel like the place you live is just a dot on a map? Well, if you live in the U.S. or Canada, Brandon Martin-Anderson just made you a dot on a map.
The MIT graduate student has built an interactive online map that displays one dot for every resident of the United States and Canada, as counted by the most recent censuses. That's 341,817,095 dots. Hover over your town or city, and black smudges on the map gradually dissolve into dot clusters and then individual dots as you zoom in.
"The reason why it (the map) keeps getting shared around is that it intersects with everyone's personal narrative," says Martin-Anderson, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab. "People want to be a piece of something larger."
Martin-Anderson wrote a Python script to generate points from census block-level counts of people, then wrote another script to sort the dots. The project took him about a week's worth of full-time coding, he said in an interview with CNN.
The map contains no identifying labels, roads or geographical features, so it can be hard to pinpoint locations. Martin-Anderson says he wanted "an image of human settlement patterns unmediated by proxies" such as arterial roads or city and state boundaries.
"All you have to do is throw 300 million points onto a page, and all these patterns pop out," he said. "People live wherever there is agriculture, and agriculture happens wherever there is rain."
Indeed, the map illustrates his point: The eastern, lusher half of the U.S. is peppered with black smudges, while the west has vast stretches of white.
Martin-Anderson is not the first to build a dotmap of population patterns - the U.S. Census has been doing them for years - but he may the first to assign one dot for each person. Coincidentally, Foursquare, the location-based networking app, published a similar interactive map last week that shows the locations of 500 million user check-ins around the world.
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You really make it seem really easy along with your presentation however I find this topic to be really one thing that I feel I would never understand. It seems too complicated and extremely vast for me. I am looking forward on your subsequent put up, I will attempt to get the hold of it!
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How will they be able to spot the toothless inbreds south of the Mason-Dixon line?
They'll be the ones working so the lazy yankees can have food to eat.
It looks a lot more to me like one of those nighttime photographs from NASA and the image has been processed to show a negative version of it.
Because light output correlates to population density, it could not possibly look like anything else.
This map is WAY off. Unless the U.S. Census has counted people living inside malls, deep woods or in the local buffalo pen where I live.
Busted. I live in rural Maine. My road is there, but there are no dots for my wife and myself. Yes, we were counted in the census. So much for the Census folks accuracy.
Interesting population divide between East and West.
WOW I was all excited to find my little dot on this map and then realized I didn't fill my 2010 Census form out so this map is missing two people... LOL
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DOTs all folks.
Good. Let all the cops, FBI agents, etc. NOT be excluded from this map.
THEN you'll see this idea "go down the tubes."
Show me where it says that the cops are excluded. Nothing states that, and there's no reason to exclude it.
The Census counts law enforcement officials, as well as all other "public servants," just as they count everyone else.
Neither the Census data that's publicly released, nor this map, identifies anybody personally...so there's no reason to believe they'd filter out law enforcement officials from the massive amount of information, or for you to feel like your privacy has somehow been violated.
Get over your paranoia, please, it's ruining your Monday.
I suppose there is some artistic value to it but it has no real useful practical purpose. Seems like a waste of time to me.
Art is pointless anyway.
Wrong! There is a style called pointilism. Look it up.
That's not true, you can overlay this information with other stored data, such as industry types, rainfall as they mentioned, highways, ect. Among many other queries that may not be obvious, to obtain insights and understanding into human population studies. This is basic GIS, but is a good layer of information, that could be added to old census data and show changes over time based off of changing environments. .
Nothing has any "useful" value, aside from what people ascribe to it. I say this map has useful value because 1) it's pretty, and 2) it's informative. If you don't agree, go read something else.
Demographics, and the study of who lives where and why, are VERY relevant.
It's how taxes and funding is allocated, it's how businesses decide where to locate and advertise...it's what helps determine property values, municipal planning, infrastructure planning...
And, from education perspectives, it helps analyze migratory patterns, climate change (whether you agree it's man-made or even man-affected, it's still changing)...soooo much more.
It's DEFINITELY a useful study, and this map, from a high-level perspective, is a part of that.
India has the most dots by far.
get off my dot, biyatch
Do Indians get counted twice?
That's pretty cool. Not far off from the map I saw on National Geographic. It was taken by satellites at night and showed all the lights across America which is the photo negative of this in someways. It also showed raging forest fires so not a perfect opposite.
Hey, does Manti Te'o's girlfriend have a dot?
No, but I have two.
The hell with your dot map.
I found my dot!
I just found the dot for Jimmy Hoffa!
I found Obama's
While this serves towards the curious person, it's also a great tool for terrorists and enemy (now or to-be) countries.
yeah, cuz they didn't know where the populous areas of the US were before this dot map.
Yes, because it is hard to look up population information online these days.... Try drinking less paranoia juice jimmy. If someone wants to bomb a populated area, I doubt very much they will be, "YES! Finally the map of census dots! Now we can finally execute our plan!".
Dammit, you're right. Now the terrorist know that New York is heavily populated. Fly you fools!
With all those dots on North East coast you would figure we would have better college football.
It's precisely BECAUSE of all of the dots that the Northeast doesn't have good football...too much overpopulation means there aren't yards for playing catch, fields for playing pick-up games, nor room (or budgeting) for schools to dedicate a significant portion of very expensive land to "a game."
My goal is to never have my "dot" counted in this twisted little "Big Brother" fantasy.
Amen brother.
That's it..."It's all about me! I'm not going to participate in society! I want roads to be built, fiber optic and other lines to be laid, police, fire, and ambulance departments to watch over me...but I don't want them to know I exist!! But I'll post onto CNN and other websites, which will track all of my activity!"
Seriously, people, get over the twisted idea that mere knowledge of your existence (necessary to ensure you're properly covered for when you need assistance) is bad, but tracking all of your online activity is good.
Hey! I can see Lennay Kekua!
I would like to thank the developer of this as it has made me laugh for the first time in a few days. The comments are too funny. Maybe update the dots each ten years and I'll check back again with CNN and get a good chuckle.
When I moved, did my dot move too?
Not unless you somehow told the Census in 2010 that you were going to be somewhere else in 2013.
It's simply transferring 2010 Census data into a visual representation....this is no different than thousands of other demographic studies showing the locations of people (it's just more "precise").
So this guy geo-coded the entire census and placed a dot for every person at the address they lIsted... yawn, anyone with a basic background in geographic information systems and enough time can do this. While noteworthy, it's not newsworthy. People in private industry do this all the time for marketing and demographic business information.
What did you do today, ass-munch?
Hahahaha
But isn't he right!!
Oh blow it out your @ss, half-wit.
CNN and news don't go together.
You are correct, CNN = Cable Network Nonsense!
Whether this is supposed to be based on census or cell phone data it is very wrong. There are 450 people in the building where I am working now, the map is blank in this area. The end of Alameda Point NAS in the SF Bay nearest San Francisco is shown as having a couple of reasonably dense areas of population. If you check Google maps satellite maps for that area you will see it has no form of occupation, nobody lives or works there or even has access to it.
Apparently, reading comprehension and an understanding of what and how the census makes its counts are beyond your grasp. Next time, try to do more than just look at the pictures; the text takes the time to explain what they represent, but that won't do you any good at all if you don't bother to read it.
I don't want to be a dot...I want to be a star!!!
Great. They got me just as I was picking my nose!
The unit I am using has no gps. I think it is wonderful how people can use their cell phone as a gps unit. I also think that map location units are very useful. Technology sure comes in handy.
How come my wife's dot at my girlfriend's dot's apartment?
How long until I can get my own Marauder's Map?
Oh my, I DON'T EXIST!!! I zoom in to where I'm standing right now, and there is no dot!! What I'm I gonna do now?
That's dot to be stressful.
That's just my mailing address. I am actually ""here""".
I can see Sarah Palin's dot from my house!
Is that dot looking at other dots from Russia ?
Dot's not my problem.
Everyone can see Sarah Palin's dot...
Hmmm yeah, too bad they don't show butts instead of dots.
I SEE ME!.......... I SEE ME!
Interesting. Begs the question as to why we give so much representation in Congress to the mid-west and Mountain time zones – especially two senators each from the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana! Ugh...
Umm, perhaps so low population states have SOME say in their governance? That is why they have an equal say in 1/2 of of the legislative branch of government. It is the whole reason we have two distinct methods selecting the amount of influence a state has. Some very bright people designed our government via the Consti.tution.
Well Excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuusee Meeeeeeeeee!
Because we've chosen a republic as our form of government?
Because we're Americans too.
Fair question. But it begs another good question: why do those dense globs of people have any say what happens in the white spaces?
Because they have all the money. And, based on this map, he's wrong about people living where there is agriculture. The agriculture is in the whit spaces (duh), as it needs land space, to grow. The concentration of black areas, have no agriculture.
That's not exactly true Don ... in many of the very dark areas, there is a lot of agriculture ... and some of the white areas include land that is not hospitable to agriculture or people ... like most of Nevada for example. I live in the Indianapolis area .. on the map it is represented as a dark area ... but not more than a couple miles from me are corn fields for as far as you can see. New Jersey is almost completely dark on this map ... New Jersey ... the Garden State. It is the most densely populated state in the country ... and is filled primarily with agriculture.
Glad to see you made it through government classes in high school....
Very cool, but... It's easy to get lost in the dots when you zoom in. Where am I? At the very least, put in cross-hairs to help me navigate into an area of interest. Sure would be nice to have some other markers - interstates at the very least.
Click the icon to add lables in the upper rigth corner. I was able to zoom down to the street level. Then discovered the program spatial data aray doesn't place people in their homes. So the data is good at the 50,00 foot level but misses the mark at the street network level.
And most of these dots get in cars and move around.
Somewhere in Kenya, a village is missing it's dot.
what, your father is back in the states?
Somewhere on the CNN boards, someone doesn't know the difference between 'it's' and 'its'.
and somewhere someone just replied incorrectly with the nonexistent its'.
Somewhere in Norway a bridge is missing its troll.
And somewhere in your head, you're missing a brain.
In Chicago, they used bullet holes instead of pin.
They could just use your head.
Poor Earth, covered in mold.
Not including the illegals.
Quadruple the dots in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. That should come somewhere close in representing the illegals.
So 3 out of 4 people in those states are illegals? Right.
You forgot the largest concentration of illegals – California.
Thesis shows why there is an East Coast Bias.
Later we'll all move around and when you connect the dots it'll be a picture of a AR 15... or a big mural of walmart store.
The night illumination photos taken from space show virtually the same thing.
For virtually the same reason.
So... if this is supposed to be the US, where are Alaska and Hawaii? My dot is not represented! I protest!
Follow the link and you can find them
ahhh yes! the two states that are somehow not part of an empire, just not close to the rest of your country!
You empire is quite icy
Any way to show the red and blue dots so we can spread latinos for next election.
No need to bring se.x into this. Next thing you know everyone is going to get all political.
Looks like mold ruining and covering a wall, poor planet Earth....
Marty...Give up your dot! It's not ALL our fault.
According to this, NC and Virginia are more heavily populated than California.
No it doesn't. It just means those states have more people in them once you get out of their big cites. But the amount people condensed inside California's major cities, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland outnumber entire states. But once you leave them, there's hardly a population, with towns not exceeding 100 people.
Look up the definition of "density"
Now I know where to move..,,
This is VERY old news.
Umm, since the story is about a specific tool and not population distribution it is not really old news.
"he wanted "an image of human settlement patterns unmediated by proxies" such as arterial roads or city and state boundaries"
That's not quite true. If you have ever flown in an airplain or driven the interstate those dots directly correspond to arterial roads, interstates, cities, and state boundries. You can tell it by the regular patterns and intervals of small towns that are often just gas stations and truck stps, and clusters of light from above. It's even more obvious when you see the bulbs of light pollution 5-10 miles away indicating a town, and big cities can be seen from 10 – 20 miles away. I bet if I connected the dots, I could use it as an interstate atlas. I bet also I could use this map to find cell phone coverage, and where gas prices are going to be higher, or where the rude and obnoxious drivers are going to be based off of intensity. I can find where the major airports are, roughly predict property prices, and where the cancer rates are higher. Where there are more humans, there are more problems. I think when I retire I want to either A: own a private island, B: Move to Arizona, or C: find a small town t live in out west.
*Airplane among the other typos and mis-spellings.
A wee bit Critical arent we?
He said the tool is unmediated, not the population. Most of that stuff you mentioned followed the population which initially settled in areas with good natural resources..The man made resources then both anchored people to those areas and allowed expansion into a wider area. Its all a very complex inter-relationship.
Oh, my, everyone can see my dot!
Gotta love that Northeast corridor. I live in the smallest state in the US but we have a higher population than some states out west that are 20 – 30 times our size.
I don't follow your logic. That's suposed to be good??
LOL! According to this map, there is NO ONE where I live! Let's keep it that way!
Maybe your just have a small dot.
That's ok. Some say, size doesn't matter.
A simple matter of resolution. Just keep zooming.
Very cool especially when you zoom in.
Oh great, now the robbers know whose house to rob.
Kidding only, this is pretty interesting!
it is nice to know they know where everyone lives.
Kind of hard to get your mail if they don't.
Complete garbage to say this is the first time doing this kind of plot map. I work for Nielsen, the demographics and TV ratings company. We and our clients have the ability to do this kind of plotting of US households on digital maps for almost a decade. Surprising that someone who self promotes can get an article about something that is not new
I'm assuming you didn't read the entire article? Did you miss the part that said "one dot for every person". These maps that Nielsen have been doing for decades, by your own admission do dots per household. Can you "spot" the difference?
I guess working for Neilson causes people to look at everything from a aggregate point of view, glossing over the details.
like bob seger said " like a tiny blade of grass in a great big field".....
The Earth's life threatening infection is spreading, gangrene.
All I can suggest then is to unleash some kind of super ebola that wipes out everyone. I will laugh myself to death if that happens.
Charity starts at home. Hurry it up.
kill yourself then.
Hmmmm, maybe if the Gub'ment didn't OWN half of the western states, there would be someone there. When 80%+ of a State is a park, military base, forest or other Federal land, no wonder it's blank.
Yes, thats all we need in the water depleted west, more people
BLM
We tend to settle where there are resources necessary for our survival, namely WATER, and well, being habitable helps too. See: Scotland...roughly same area as England, but 1/10th the population...give it a visit, then it'll all make sense.
Not always true. We build where there is a view and then bring the resources to sustain us. Think of living on a mountain or at the seashore. The New Jersey seashore was a pretty place 100 years ago. Now look at it, ugly, crowded with big houses and running out of drinking water.
Its about scale. A few individuals bringing in the resources is one thing, putting huge populations where there are scarce resources causes problems. Look at water issues in the Florida Keys and several western cities.
The "Gub'mint" you speak of is The People of the United States. I think quite a few of them would prefer that Arches National Park, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, and Escalante/Grand Staircase National Monument not be put up for sale to the highest bidder and sold for mining rights.
Quite a few people are living in the part in front of my house. Weird, I didn't know that )))
It is clearly cancer.
Wow really looks like they printed out an outline of the us and let a kid dot all over it.
Pretty useless
And that is why I have no desire to live east of the rockies.
Looks alot like the 'earth at night' photo
I threw out our census form.
Looks like a lot of room for immigrants on the mid-western side of US IMAO.
It might be hard to farm with immigrants hanging out all over...oh wait, never mind. But you can't populate the Rocky Mountains too densely though.
Once again, Alaska and Hawaii are not part of the United States
Yep! Until it comes to vacation time or oil, both AK and HI are totally ignored. It might be a good thing tho.............
Correct on the vacation part. 2012 was Hawaii, 2013 will be back to Alaska!!!!
If you follow the link provided to the real map he created, Hawaii and Alaska are included, you just have to move the map a bit to see them.
I like! Not 100 percent accurate at the zoom scale, but overall nice to see the settlement patterns.
I claim Face-dot as a copyright and trademark
I love that I live in a white zone~!
Double Meaning
I see there's a lot of black dots on the east coast, with white dots migrating to the mid-west.
look at all them mexicans
We need more people on the left side. We're going to fall over into the Atlantic.
I've put in a request to have my dot removed. I'm offended. I'm not that round.
LOL!!!! Spilled coffee, but totally worth it!
If you look real close,you can see green dots in d.c.That represents aliens from the planet stupid.
And they have much higher "density" than the other dots too...
Really this map is simply taking each census blocks and randomly placing the number a number of dots within the block equal to the population for that blocks.
So sub census block it is useless. Also the census really begins to break down at the block level with a lot of error. This error evens out over a larger scale.
It looks like mold. Hmmm...
This is great. I am looking for a lady who would like to play "connect the dots."
DJ don't you mean connect the "liver spots"??
No Jim W...Not "live spots". I mean, my dot connected to her dot......object, new dot.
OOO look some nice people free hunting land in Utah.....and Wyoming. At 300 to 600 per acre. HERE I COME BABY!!!
I'm sure Wyoming will welcome you.
Phenomenal!