JavaScript and jQuery for Data Analysis and Visualization

Chapter 13Mapping Global, Regional, and Local Data

What's in This Chapter

• Learning how to plot an interactive map on a web page using the Google Maps API
• Plotting markers at desired locations on a map
• Plotting point clouds of data on a map
• Displaying density information on a map using a heat map
• Turning publically available vector map geometry into GeoJSON
• Plotting GeoJSON as SVG using D3 and TopoJSON
• Using D3 to display animated choropleth maps

CODE DOWNLOAD The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at www.wrox.com/go/javascriptandjqueryanalysis on the Download Code tab. The code is in the chapter 13 download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

This chapter is all about visualizing data on maps. It starts with visualizing data that has some form of associated geographic position as markers on a map and then moves on to conveying statistical information about geographic regions by varying their color through what is known as choropleth mapping.

If you've used the Internet at all in the past decade, chances are you've used the Google Maps web application at some point. It enables you to search for points of interest, find directions between one place and another, and to smoothly zoom and pan around the map to examine things. Fortunately, Google also released an application programming interface (API) that enables you to build web applications that plot various data over the Google Maps tile images and allow this data ...