Small pages that show ideas from cartography or geographic information science. They allow you to interact and explore the ideas. They run in a browser with nothing to install, on a phone or on a projector.
Note that this page and the widgets linked to here should be assumed to have been made in close conversation with Claude Code, mostly for classroom purposes.
Explore spatial autocorrelation. Pattern lives in arrangement, not in amounts: the same number of grey squares, rearranged, gives a different answer. Who counts as a neighbour is a choice. Some things Moran’s I cannot see at all, such as direction. Paint the squares and watch it respond, globally and square by square.
Explore the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem. Cut Vancouver into areas one way, then another: the records stay the same and the answer does not. The records are made by institutions. Their categories decide what can be said. Taking space seriously helps, but no technical fix can settle the question of which aggregations and scales to rely upon in a given situation.
An exploration of the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP). Boundaries are drawn by someone. Whoever draws the shapes shapes what the data will say. Is there a relationship between what households earn and how green the ground is? Paint eight zones over Vancouver and watch the answer move. Four zonings anybody could defend disagree. One turns the line over altogether.
Explore relative space. Distance is not only a property of the ground. It is made by how people move. Lonsdale Quay and Commercial Drive are both about three kilometres from Waterfront Station. On foot, one is thirty-eight minutes away and the other over two hours. Press Minutes and the map reshapes itself around trip times.
Explore the Analytical Hierarchy Process for decision-making. Every weight in a model is a choice somebody made. Here, judgements about what matters more are turned into numbers. Say how much more important each of three things is than the next. Three percentages come out. A second number says how consistent your comparisons are. Consistent is not the same as right.
Explore least-cost path analysis for routing. An optimal route is only optimal for somebody: its costs are values, not measurements. A power line has to cross Surrey to reach a new plant. Protect farmland, follow what is built, or keep away from homes: each position draws its own line. View the proposals side by side, each carrying the values that drew it.