This is a weird ass pie chart using the US map as a base right? If I am correct then this is a terrible way to display this data.
Why? It gives people a relatable size and shape to compare to. Like saying the 100 richest landowners own equivalent to Florida.
I get that but it needs to be labeled some way to clarify this at least. A lot of people look at this and could easily think it is what each area has the most of and that the positions of the types of land have something to do with the states they are near or cover.
Agreed. I definitely thought that at first, thinking some of them seemed very off. Glad I read these comments. It’s especially confusing considering where some things are in the map that it seams almost believable for example that NY/NJ are made up mostly of mostly urban and commercial areas.
But it is a good chart (not map) for what it’s intended to show with some perspective provided in proper labeling.
A lot of people sure keep saying “a lot of people” and getting mad at the graph instead of just laughing it off that they didn’t get it at first. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t immediately understand something.
It’s an infographic. It’s purpose is to be understandable at a glance. I thought it was a pie chart then second guessed myself then read the comments and saw a lot of comments that were confused about it. You think I am saying “A lot of people” when I mean “just me I didn’t get this shit at all but I am going to say a lot of people to cover that up”? Read other comments here… a lot of comments (which I assume come from different people) seem like those writing them are confused.
I don’t have any anger here. It’s a random infographic. If something like this was presented to me at a job where I needed a clear concise answer immediatley and my job depended on me using it… then I dunno maybe anger and frustration then?
I think you are reading things into my words that are not there.
Anyway TLDR: Inforgraphics are supposed to be understandable at a glance…this one is not therefore it is not a very good infographic. I dunno why I would laugh about it either…it’s an infographic.
It’s very difficult to compare relative sizes at a glance compared to a pie chart, or other styles like just a bar graph. This is a graph crime.
i really do not understand how anyone can be confused by this, obviously it’s not a geographical map because new mexico does not contain the sum total of all american railways…
It’s a fine graph that gives an intuitive sense for how much area is used for each thing.
It’s really funny to imagine it literally, though.
“We’ll I’d heard some bad things about West Texas highways, but this just seems excessive.”
No no, that’s the Grand Texan Runway for landing and takeoff of the death star!
Yeah and Michigan doesn’t contain all the idle/fallow land in the US but the problem is some people look at this and think that Michigan contains the most idle/fallow land in the US which is why it was used to represent that portion of the data.
I feel like there is a single sentence or phrase that could be written above the or near the graphic which would make it clear but I honestly don’t know what it is.
Why is some people’s inability to use critical thinking anyone else’s problem? Like, don’t make assumptions then. Or, take a beat to understand what’s in front of you. There’s nothing wrong with this graph.
Yes my inability to use critical thinking is obvious because I think this inforgraphic isn’t clear enough to everyone. It’s not like there are a shit ton of comments where people are obviously confused by this infographic and all of them must lack the critical thinking skills that you must have in spades. You seem like a real swell person. Keep being you and if everyone around thinks your insults make you come off as an asshole ignore them… they probably just lack critical thinking skills.
“land use amount is to scale, location is not”
Still seems kind of clunky, and given all the misunderstanding ITT it might do more harm than good.
I kind of like it tbh
I’m glad this community is following in the tradition of the reddit one, ugly graphics that communicate nothing useful yet somehow get upvoted to the top
Yeah, this is a pretty appalling graphic that maybe seemed good in theory but is hostile to the reader in practice.
Oooooh. I assumed it was supposed to have a geographic relation. Yes, this is extremely unclear.
I like seeing the area.
Has anyone started c/terriblemaps yet?
Ah, that makes sense. I mean, it doesn’t make sense, but it makes more sense than looking at this as an actual map.
This seems like it was developed as a joke. Not what I’m looking for in a data-oriented forum.
Seems like I’m getting 3 reactions to this map:
- Neat map
- I don’t understand this map
- I will find you and kill your family for this crime against data
cannot believe how many people are confused that the use blocks aren’t showing use in that location, just size in relation to the size of the country
Wait what? Oh God that’s a horrible way to lay out data
I found it immediately extremely obvious and intuitive
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I’d say put me under #3, but I’d need you to draw me a map and we all know how that went last time
Sick burn
Thanks for putting out what is at least an interesting and engaging graphic for us to comment on! I myself have two of the three reactions you listed
Because everyone else is shitting on it - I just wanna let you know OP that I actually liked this map
I’d suggest a merger between ‘100 largest landowning families’ and ‘Food we eat’.
Why isn’t parking on here?
[email protected] is leaking.
Oh great, the “everyone lives in cities and I have no concept of rural living” people are here now too.
Awww, ya’ll are butthurt and downvoting me for pointing out not everyone has access to mass transportation or reliable shopping within three blocks of their house.
More like “what if people living in cities didn’t have to depend on a car”
“And screw those rural types who need one in the process”
Rual, as in my lively hood is based on the land I live on/near or “rual” as in a suburb built in the green way, but I still do the rest of my work and living in the city?
Rural as in the nearest town with more than 30,000 people is 90 miles away.
The “80% of the us population” crowd is here. So cringe.
Yeah, cause fuck those of us who don’t live in cities, right?
Streets aren’t really mentioned either, besides “Rural highways”. I assume other streets and parking spaces are mostly included in “Urban/Rural housing” and/or “Urban commercial” (smaller rural streets might not be counted seperately from the surrounding land).
That was the first thing I was looking for too.
I was looking for the people shocked 100 Americans basically own Florida, that’s a whole European country there
Until fairly recently, i.e. the last 150 years, only a handful of people owned all of europe too.
Oh no they still do, they just hide it better lol XD
Touché
expected more corn
That entire block that says “ethanol” is corn, plus that entire block that says corn syrup, and a good chunk of that block that says “livestock feed”. It’s a lot of corn.
It’s in there, it’s just split up between food we eat, livestock feed, feed exports, ethanol, and corn syrup. Not all those categories are all corn but even then corn will be a lot of it.
Right?
It’s completely missing North Dakota which, when I visited was mostly corn. This is misleading at best.
“Food we eat” is half the size of “livestock feed”. Plus look at how small wetlands/deserts are, wetlands especially are essential to climate resillience. What egregiously bad land use, wow. Thanks for this post, it’s great.
It takes 76% less land for us to just eat plants, rather than to grow them to feed to animals that we then in turn eat. Really amazing how inefficient it is.
It’s just wrong though. Deserts are particularly huge in the West. Essentially the whole states of Arizona and New Mexico, plus parts of Utah and Nevada.
They’re probably inside the “parks” part.
I think you might be on to something with the parks idea. I know California has a Protection Act on the books that covers ours.
I have examined this abstraction of a map thoroughly.
I do not see any garbage dumps, recycling facilities, sewage processing, cemeteries, energy production, water production…
I could carry on, but this map means almost nothing with all sorts of factors missing.
Without digging in to the numbers further than just looking at this map, could this be because the relative areas of the factors you listed didn’t pass a threshold to make it? @ezmack what data source was used for this?
Bloomberg article https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/#xj4y7vzkg
Not OP, but I’d think cemeteries should outweigh golf courses in land area.
Feel free to prove me wrong though.
I think you might underestimate golf course land use, as well as miss that a lot of that mightve just been counted with the surrounding neighborhoods, since that’s more of a community service
Urban-commercial
its also missing the fact that tons of animal pastures is on federal land.
Those take up less space than you’d think
Well, I grew up on 60 acres with like 18 horses and 25 goats. Can’t say I’ve visited every farm out there to know how large or how cramped they might be.
I resent the hell out of that golf pimple.
Sounds like we need to make a c/fuckgolf
Absolutely
.
Valid point.
You must live in Augusta too, huh?
the amount of land for cows is crazy. and the fact that more land goes to livestock feed than food we eat is interesting as well
The conversion losses to feed animals is very high. It takes 76% less land for us to subsist on plants rather than to eat meat. Well, actually, that’s the world average, it might be even higher in the US because of its higher meat consumption. I should check the study again.
But I feel like land for cows is akin to food we eat because we eat a lot of those cows also.
It is absolutely blowing my mind how many people are looking at this and thinking that is trying to show, like, primary land use per block on the map or something?
Like it’s well-known that maple syrup comes exclusively from northwest PA, plus all the logging that happens in downtown San Francisco and LA.
Every single home is in the northeast
Is this a glorified pie chart? Follow-up question: Why is this not just an actual pie chart?
the idea is to show that X land use consumes an area equivalent to an easily recognizable state-area
the added context of the US map gives it some utility that a pie chart, which is just straight trash, does not have
a bar graph or even just a table would convey similar information more precisely and usefully, but if your only goal is to give an intuitive sense of the land use (not writing policy or anything here) it suits
Pie charts are useless in general.
For the example shown here there are way too many categories for a pie chart. You would not be able to see anything past the top 3 or so categories as the slices get too thin and the labels would be all over the place.
Lastly you would miss out on the size comparisons to e.g. states.
This is much better.
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Anytime
What’s a weirghourhdmsjrhrht?
How much is native reservations
Quite a bit? a reservation isn’t land use lmao. The Navajo rez probably makes up a good chunk of that sheep grazing for example. Native people use the land too, it isn’t just there.
I get the sentiment but thats absolutely not relevant to this data.
I’m curious why first nation reservations weren’t demarcated. Or maybe they were and I’m just an idiot lol.
This doesn’t show where these uses are located on a map, just the area of land relative to the total country.
Heck I want to know where Alaska and Hawaii went.
