For every Internet commenter who enters online arguments about the USA with facts they got from their butt, there's a map that presents hard data bare and allows the viewers to make their own interpretations.
From light pollution and tree coverage to out-of-service railways and streets and highways, maps may not immediately look as exciting as a viral cat video -- which might explain why we often overlook them when -- but that doesn't mean that are boring. To prove that, we put together a selection of maps that explain the United States better then most textbooks and if broadening your worldview isn't thrilling, I don't know what is.
This post may include affiliate links.
Most Commonly Spoken Language In The Us After English And Spanish
There’s often overlapping features between maps. For example, a topographic map could be utilized to show the distribution of a local orchid, making it both a topographic and thematic map. It could also be used to show well-known features of specific interest to travelers making this topographic, general reference, and thematic maps all in one.
The most widely used maps are “Political maps”. They are the ones that are usually mounted on the walls of classrooms throughout the world. They show the geographic boundaries between governmental units such as countries, states, and counties. They show roads, cities, and major water features such as oceans, rivers, and lakes.
The United States Of America: Alaskan Perspective
Political maps are really good at helping people to understand the geography of the world. They are usually the first type of map that students are introduced to in school, too. They are often called “reference maps” because people refer to them again and again when they have questions.
According to Geology.com, thousands of different political reference maps have been prepared to explain the United States. There are maps of the entire nation, maps for each of the 50 states, and even maps of the 3142 counties (parishes in Louisiana, and boroughs in Alaska) that make up the states. Most counties, boroughs, and parishes are further subdivided into even smaller political units. An incredible number of political maps have been prepared just to display the geography of the United States alone.
How I, A Brit, See The United States (Sorry If It Offends Anyone)
Patrick McGranaghan, who is a land surveyor in Colorado, USA, and the creator of one of the biggest online cartography communities, r/MapPorn, did an analysis on its most popular posts on Twitter. McGranaghan collected the 10 best-performing posts from the previous 18 months -- about 200 maps in total -- and went through each of them individually, tagging them based on the content, style, and subject matter. He then sorted the tags to see which ones were the most common.
States With A Smaller Population Than Los Angeles County
"The most popular subject was history," McGranaghan told Bored Panda. "In this category, the most popular maps were about World War II." Maps about other wars were also well liked, as well as those about the ancient Romans and historic trade routes.
"Another popular category was natural science. Especially popular are maps about wildlife, such as those that use tracking data to show animal migration patterns. Other topics included geology and astronomic maps."
Interestingly, quite a few viral maps focused on language. These include etymology, dialect and various pronunciation maps.
US Watersheds
"Another topic that I grouped together are 'political re-alignments'. These are maps that deal with boundaries. Subjects like separatist movements, re-drawing borders, and user-created idealizations. Many of these are satirical and funny," McGranaghan explained.
McGranaghan, however, wouldn't say that all of these maps are scientific. "I think the data is a bit noisy, but it's interesting nonetheless. Users sometimes want a magic formula to make their maps go viral and I don't think there is one. The tastes of the masses are fickle and change over time."
Red And Orange Areas Have Equal Populations
This is not at all surprising, since nearly half the population in this country lives within 30 miles of the coast.
When it comes to maps that best describe a country, McGranaghan thinks that it depends on the goal of the mapmaker. "All maps are generalizations, some good, some bad. They are not true representations and a good 'reader' should know that. I think good data visualization will take disparate datasets and find meaningful connections that weren't known before. It sounds simple but it is not so straightforward. A good mapmaker should be familiar with many matrices of knowledge and should be able to sift through them and make new connections."
McGranaghan created r/MapPorn in May 2011 while living in Taiwan, and it currently has over 995K members. He thinks the reason why the community is becoming so big is the same one why people like maps so much: they are easily digestible. So go ahead folks, continue scrolling and enjoy the rest of the post. Bon appétit!
United States Population Lines
The Most Efficient Route Between Every Springfield In The United States
Tree Cover Map Of The US
How Much Snow Does It Usually Take To Cancel Schools?
Nice. I always get a kick out of the places that close school for an inch of snow. You don't even need to wear a coat for 1" of snow.
Most Common Surname In The United States By State
Every State's Least Favorite State
Its Very Interesting
More People Live Inside The Red Area Than The Grey Area
... and this is the downfall of the American election system called the electoral college.
Drug Overdose Deaths In The United States Per 100,000 Persons For 1999 And 2014
US States Scaled Proportionally To Population Density
The Loudest And Quietest Spots In The Continental US
my house is in the border of very loud and very quiet. I can hear trains, a freeway, coyote howls, and owls hooting.
Out Of Service Railways
The U.S. Mapped By Residents’ Desire To Move To A Different State
Use Of The Word "Dang" Across The Continental US
How America Utilizes Its Land
Percentage Of People Born Outside The U.S. In Each State
Regions Of The U.S. That Don't Officially Celebrate Christopher Columbus Day
Popular Coffee Shop Chains By Number Of Locations
Map Of Lowest Recorded Temperature In Each Us State (Fahrenheit)
This is Hilarious to me, my ex-husband was raised in Alaska from 7 year's old until 22 year's old & heard a ton of weather stories 😅 😄 😂 😆 🙃 🤣 😅 😄 I've been there 4 time's but alway's in summer though!
Light Pollution In The United States
Air Traffic Control Zones In The USA
U.S. Education Spending Map
Explains why so many US citizens show a heartbreaking ignorance and why a guy like Trump could become president.
Map Of The United States' 8 Million Miles Of Roads, Streets And Highways
USA Tree Diversity
Garbage Can vs. Trash Can In The United States
Portion Of Each State That Is Federal Land
All U.S. Counties With In-N-Out Burger As Of May 2020
A Tastier Map
Date Of Creation Of All 3,142 U.S. Counties
US Governors By Eye Color
Voters Who Didn't Vote For Hillary Or Trump
We exercised our right to vote for whomever we chose. Considering only 58% of eligible voters voted, meaning 90 million people who could vote, didn't. 5.2 million people voted for a third party candidate. So who is worse? Someone who voted their convictions or someone who couldn't be bothered?
Load More Replies...
If you didn't vote, you don't get to complain... also, if you don't research and vote in your local elections you are doing yourself a great disservice. Local government has a significant impact on your life.
Some would argue that local elections are more important in your day to day life than national elections. Though, right now, I'm not sure which is more important.
Load More Replies...
That's "Clinton or Trump". The fact that this headline didn't look odd to you helps to explain why we've never had a female President.
Her official campaign slogan was "Hillary 2016" not "Clinton 2016"
Load More Replies...
It's time to stop voting for the "lesser of two evils" and vote for who you feel is right for the country. Don't just vote for this guy or that guy if you don't want them to win. Explore your 3rd option. If we all had the balls to finally vote 3rd party and get away from the big gov that's been shoved down our throat then maybe we would finally see the change!
An artifact of "winner take all" - if you know your state is guaranteed to go to a candidate, you feel your vote matters less and it's less risky to make a statement by voting third party. If we had ranked voting, even more would try 3rd party.
This should be labeled "...voted for someone other than Hillary or Trump." Because on average, about 38% of eligible voters didn't vote at all.
You are only counted as a voter if you vote. Eligible voter and actual voter are two different things.
Load More Replies...
GUYS THIS IS SO TRUE In GA pretty much everyone has such strong opinions about absolutely everything
Kinda like when your a Broncos Fan, like me, and you realise that it is the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Tom Brady's Bucs in the Super Bowl
What is misleading is 50% of all eligible voters don't vote for anyone.
Because Alaska is four hours behind the east coast many of our voters already know who's won by the time they go vote.
I voted 3rd party in the 2016 election. I had hoped it would be the election in which there was a huge increase in people doing so - enough to signal to the Republicans and Democrats that they had to start working for the people, not corporations and their powerful campaign donors. Alas, far too many people forgot that you don't HAVE to vote for one of the two major parties.
voting should be requirement of citizenship - but then so should a education. now we are trumped.
proud to be from a dark green state. well kind of. we still gave trump our 5 electoral votes...
So now we all know whose fault it is... Those states are banned from the US!!!
More people voted for a third party in swing states, than was needed for Clinton to overtake Trump in votes, and win the Electoral College. By voting for a third party, including Jill Stein (who has had dinner with Putin), they gave Trump the win.
Once again that's making an assumption on what the people who voted third party would have done. I would bet at least half of them wouldn't have even voted if Trump or Clinton were the only options. Third party voters aren't saying they don't care, in fact it's just the opposite. If more people would get out of the mindset that voting third party is wasting your vote, then perhaps we might start to get better candidates to vote for. And Biden is no fish sandwich. Once again (to borrow terminology from South Park) the choice is between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.
Load More Replies...Average Size Of US Apartments By Region
Results Of The 1984 United States Presidential Election By County. The Most Lopsided Election In History, The Only State Reagan Failed To Win Was His Opponent’s, Minnesota
In reverse, this must be the outcome of the 2020 election. Trump is setting up the "corrupt election" playbook so that when he loses, he can claim the election was fraudulent. We need to do the same thing Reagan did and OVERWHELMINGLY vote the morbidly obese pathological lying vindictive narcissistic imbecile with the emotional maturity of a toddler (AKA tRump) out of office.
US Counties With Gdp Over $100b
USA Country Map Divided By 1/3rds Of Covid Deaths
As an American, I would be really interested in seeing maps like these for the UK and Europe.
Ooooh, id love to see that. You could use adoption data. You could also do one by most spent on vet bills and most food and toys purchased.
Load More Replies...
Very interesting set of maps. I just wish they had a higher res ones because some of them were really hard to read.
yes and even if you could read them I still didn't understand some of them, like the light pollution one? Maybe I'm alone but whatever I just agree with jamie1707
Load More Replies...
Trump wanted the electoral college defunded because he's against all that fancy edjumacation. His magic 8-ball beats any stupid scientists and their technologeez and advanced mints any day!
Load More Replies...
more, please! Ma, Mom, Mama, Momma, Mother etc; Dad, Pop, Papa, Pa, Father, etc; education - and types of education; sleep patterns; loneliness; favorite fairy tales . . .
Most of those were interesting. The political ones, not so much. People's remarks just get rabid.
Quite annoying that when I entered a comment, you wanted me to log in. After I did so, I was taken back to the top of the story and when I scrolled down to see my comment, it had been disappeared. If it "works as designed", the designers need another needs analysis session.
I enjoy these maps. When we were looking for job interviews in locations we would like to live, we shaded areas color coded for forest, climate and bear habitat, correlated with job openings. Then we constructed a travel plan to interview in those places. It was remarkably effective strategy, and helped us focus our search. Searching by animal habitat was interesting as well.
The waffle house map doesn't make sense. The numbers are wrong if this is number of individual stores.
Awesome information. How did they find this information and I can’t find specific information shopping on the internet? I ask for “x” and “a,” “b,” “y,” and “z.”
What great way to show people why we have an electoral college, and why we WONT let California or New York elect our president...
Tyranny to the minority is soo MUCH better than tyranny to the majority. /s
Load More Replies...
Pro tip; if you want people to take you seriously, learn how to spell
Load More Replies...
None of this had anything to do with that. If you're going to take a poke at us, at least make it relevant.
Load More Replies...
I don't think you realize how large the United States is. Many of our states are larger than European countries.
Load More Replies...
The name of the continent is North America. Even if one accepts the argument that N and S America are a single continent, the accepted demonym for citizens of the USA is "American".
Load More Replies... As an American, I would be really interested in seeing maps like these for the UK and Europe.
Ooooh, id love to see that. You could use adoption data. You could also do one by most spent on vet bills and most food and toys purchased.
Load More Replies... Very interesting set of maps. I just wish they had a higher res ones because some of them were really hard to read.
yes and even if you could read them I still didn't understand some of them, like the light pollution one? Maybe I'm alone but whatever I just agree with jamie1707
Load More Replies... Trump wanted the electoral college defunded because he's against all that fancy edjumacation. His magic 8-ball beats any stupid scientists and their technologeez and advanced mints any day!
Load More Replies... more, please! Ma, Mom, Mama, Momma, Mother etc; Dad, Pop, Papa, Pa, Father, etc; education - and types of education; sleep patterns; loneliness; favorite fairy tales . . .
Most of those were interesting. The political ones, not so much. People's remarks just get rabid.
Quite annoying that when I entered a comment, you wanted me to log in. After I did so, I was taken back to the top of the story and when I scrolled down to see my comment, it had been disappeared. If it "works as designed", the designers need another needs analysis session.
I enjoy these maps. When we were looking for job interviews in locations we would like to live, we shaded areas color coded for forest, climate and bear habitat, correlated with job openings. Then we constructed a travel plan to interview in those places. It was remarkably effective strategy, and helped us focus our search. Searching by animal habitat was interesting as well.
The waffle house map doesn't make sense. The numbers are wrong if this is number of individual stores.
Awesome information. How did they find this information and I can’t find specific information shopping on the internet? I ask for “x” and “a,” “b,” “y,” and “z.”
What great way to show people why we have an electoral college, and why we WONT let California or New York elect our president...
Tyranny to the minority is soo MUCH better than tyranny to the majority. /s
Load More Replies... Pro tip; if you want people to take you seriously, learn how to spell
Load More Replies... None of this had anything to do with that. If you're going to take a poke at us, at least make it relevant.
Load More Replies... I don't think you realize how large the United States is. Many of our states are larger than European countries.
Load More Replies... The name of the continent is North America. Even if one accepts the argument that N and S America are a single continent, the accepted demonym for citizens of the USA is "American".
Load More Replies...