Business Analyst Online - Color-Coded Maps

Creating a color-coded map provides information about an area of interest. To find out more about a market, you can quickly identify important patterns in the area you are investigating by viewing information about key metrics on a map. You can visually explore demographic information, consumer spending patterns, information about business, or other market conditions on the map.

When creating a color-coded map, it is useful to select a location on the map. You can view a specific location such as an address or you can zoom into an area and use different geography levels including state and county. See Navigating the map for help on changing the map background, zooming in or out, printing, and so on.

Steps:

From the Create Maps from Data tab, click Color-Coded Maps.
The Color-Coded Maps dialog box appears on the left.

Choose a variable to map

To search for variables and access the Data Browser, you can use the following options:

Search all variables text box
Use Category, Favorites and Recent buttons
Browse all variables
Create a custom variable

Search all variables

You can search for variables by entering a variable in the Search all variables text box such as population or income.

Search by category, favorites or recent

Use the options to find the variables. Click on a category to access the Data Browser.

Category - Provides variables that are grouped in categories.
Favorites - Lists your favorite variables. The Favorites tab is populated by variables that you have indicated with yellow stars.
Recent - Access your most recent variables.

Browse all variables

Click Browse all variables.

The Data Browser appears with options to search variables or browse by category. You can create a custom variable if you need a specific type, range or combination of data.

Selecting a variable using any of these options will apply the variable and display a color-coded map. For more information on working with the color-coded map, see Map Details and Map Appearance.

Map Details

Once you've made your selection, the variables will be applied and displayed in a color-coded map. The Map Details contain the Legend and Data tabs. You can edit ranges and filter your maps. You can also change the variable for your map with Change Variable and change the year for your data by clicking on the year buttons.

Legend tab

The Legend tab below shows the value ranges for the selected variable and geography on the map according to color and allows you to edit the color, edit ranges and filter the map.

You can choose the geography level for your analysis from States, Counties, ZIP Codes, Census Tracts, and Block Groups. You can use the lock to set the geography levels for your maps. By default, the map is displayed in the geography based on the zoom level and updates when zooming in or out. You can set the analysis geography by locking and unlocking geography levels by clicking on the lock icon. lock

You can use the Current Map drop-down menu, which is the default, or you can select study areas on the map to filter your color-coded map to the specific area.

Note:

Small geographies are not available at all zoom levels. When zooming out, a pop-up window appears to indicate that the selected geography can't be viewed at this scale. You must zoom in to make the geography visible.

Edit color

To change the colors in the legend, click the color thumbnail. A color picker appears.

Click a color and the map changes.

Note:

You can use the Reverse Colors button to reverse the selected color ramp.

To keep the category ranges the same as you pan the map, click Lock ranges while panning. This allows you to compare different locations using the same ranges.

Filter

You can filter the view of the map for the variable you have chosen. This allows you to highlight specific values visually on the map. For example, when viewing the population by age in a block group, you can create a filter by selecting greater than and entering a value of 5,000. The map will only show color-shaded block groups where the population by age is more than 5,000 people.

Steps:

Click Filter.
Move the sliders to filter the map.
The map is automatically updated.
Click Save.

Edit ranges

You can edit the ranges for the variable you have chosen. This allows you to change the ranges to provide more details for your point. For example, if you are interested in a specific age group, you can expand the range to provide more data for that variable.

Steps:

On the Legend tab, click Edit ranges.

The selected variable data appears in a graph format.

To edit the ranges, you can move the handles and enter new numbers or percentages.
Once your edits are made, click Save.
The changes are reflected on the Legend tab and on the map.

Data tab

The Data tab allows you to view the data in a table or graph.

Steps:

Click the Data tab.
To view the table, click the Table button.
Place the mouse pointer over an item in the table and the corresponding area is highlighted on the map.
To view the graph, click the Graph button.
Place the mouse pointer over an item in the graph and the corresponding area is highlighted.

To export the data to Excel, click Export to Excel to export the data you see on the color-coded map.

Note:

For the U.S., only the first 100 block groups can be exported.

For Canada, only the first 100 dissemination areas can be exported.

Map Appearance

The Map Appearance section allows you to make changes to the map appearance. You can change the color, transparency, border, method, breaks and display. Changes made will appear immediately on the map.

Colors

The Colors drop-down menu allows you to select from a palette of colors for viewing the results from the variable in your map.

Steps:

To change the colors, click the Colors drop-down menu and the color choices appear.
Click the color you want to view in your map.

Transparency

The Transparency slider allows you to change the transparency percentage of the map view.

Steps:

To change the transparency, use the Transparency slider.
Place the mouse pointer over the transparency line and slide it to the left to decrease the transparency percentage or to the right to increase the transparency percentage.

Border

Border allows you to select the color outline and thickness of the selected geography.

To change the border thickness, click the Border drop-down menu and click your choice.

To change the border color, click the Border color palette and click your color choice.

Method

Quantile provides classes with the same number of features. This is useful for data that is evenly distributed where you want to emphasize the difference in relative position between features. For example, using the Quantile method to display Per Capita Income results in an equal number of geographies in each class or value range.

Natural breaks is a method of manual data classification that seeks to partition data into classes based on natural groups in the data distribution. Natural breaks occur in the histogram at the low points of valleys. Breaks are assigned in the order of the size of the valleys, with the largest valley being assigned the first natural break.

The Equal Interval creates ranges (or classes) with equal spacing on the number line between the lowest and highest values of the variable. Equal Interval is useful when you want to emphasize the difference in values among geographies on the map. For example, using Equal Interval to display Per Capita Income results in few geographies having the color of the highest class and more geographies change to the color of the lower value range.

Breaks

Breaks allow you to select the number of values that appear in the Legend in the Map Details.

Move the Breaks arrow slider to select your choice.

Display

The Place and Road labels allow you to view these labels on top of the map. These are unchecked by default.

Click Place labels to see the place labels of a city, state, and so on.
Click Road labels to see road and highway labels.

Note:

The place and road labels appear above the color-coded map.