The Myth of ‘Data Science’

Over the past several years, the term ‘data science’ has emerged as one of those fashionable buzzwords that I hope will soon disappear. The term data science implies that its practitioners operate within the firm guidelines of bias-free and replicable empirical...

Pandemics and Geography

The COVID-19 pandemic has attracted the attention of many data scientists who have happily set off to apply their methods to epidemiology, and unwittingly have waded directly into the complex issues which ‘quantitative geography’ often painfully learned of some...

TNS Index

November is here, which means that Thanksgiving is right around the corner. While you will be avoiding awkward political conversations with your Great Aunt Karen, turkeys will be overcooked and not enjoyed by families everywhere. We started to wonder: where are...

The Scourge of GPS

Once upon a time, the average person had a modicum of geographic awareness. Most had a Thomas Guide or Rand-McNally atlas on the back seat of the car. To navigate you had to understand the concept of multi-level spatial tiling (using the index) and compass directions,...

Mapping Spatially Complex Variables

Many of the subjects we map in these pages are spatially complex and the choice of geographic scale can have a significant impact on the patterns that appear to the user, especially on the physically limited maps that can be quickly displayed on web pages. Often as...