The maps I looked at were the “mapping prejudice” map in Ramsey and Hennepin counties, the “Mapping the State of the Union” project, and the “Slave Revolt in Jamaica” map. Right off the bat, all of the maps incorporate time in order to express trend shifts over a region in a given time frame. The biggest strength of a map is that it makes it much easier to visualize individual datapoints as they are tied to a location rather than a point in a graph. In this vein I believe the best way to map data is to contextualize the data in ways that would not otherwise be possible. A map is made more understandable by its subdivisions especially if the map is accompanied by an explanation of the significance of said subdivisions. Maps are an excellent way of visualizing data but they are best accompanied by text that provides analysis of the data.
This is seen in the map of Jamaica as each datapoint is interactive and connects to a description of the event that happened at that place and time. Similarly, although not to the same extent, the map of countries mentioned in a State of the Union Address over the years has an attached article that explains in sections the context in which different regions were mentioned and give period specific explanations for some of the more dramatic results. It is in this regard that I find the University of Minnesota map to be lacking as it doesn’t go into the same detail about individual housing covenants and instead provides more general information about how they all came to be. It would be interesting to look at the direction that these covenants spread and perhaps overlay a heatmap of property values or public investment into infrastructure on top
