See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

“Fans may not list which team they favor on the census, but millions of them do make their preferences public on Facebook. Using aggregated data provided by the company, we were able to create an unprecedented look at the geography of baseball fandom, going down not only to the county level, as Facebook did in a nationwide map it released a few weeks ago, but also to ZIP codes.”

Seth Dixon‘s insight:

This isn’t just a fun sports map–there are some good geographic concepts that can be used here.  When discussing cultural regions, many use the core-domain-sphere model.  This map uses the brightest color intensities to represent the core regions and the lightest hues to show waning strength, but to still signify that the area is a part of a team’s sphere of influence.  Essentially, this map is begging you to explore the borderlands, the liminal “in-between” spaces that aren’t as easy to explain.  What other phenomena can be used to demonstrate the core-domain-sphere model of cultural regions?  What other geographic concepts can you teach using this map?  

Tags: fun, sport, place, borders, statistics, mapping, regions.

See on www.nytimes.com