It's important to seriously discuss and measure the quality of different thematic mapping techniques . I appreciate the critique from Dr. Mark Harrower on the Axis Maps Blog . I encourage everyone to read Mark's blog post - it's an interesting and timely read. This is a quick response to this critique - more blog posts will follow. In short, I agree with most of the arguments put forward, but I disagree with the conclusions: I agree that my 3-D graduated symbol maps are "pure chart junk", but there are some good examples of 3-D symbol maps. ( See previous blog post ) I disagree that 3-D prism maps are chart junk - but thematic world maps on a 3-D globe are problematic. (See previous blog posts: [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ]). I very much disagree that Virtual Globes are a bad idea for thematic mapping, but it's certainly not the only or the ultimate way of showing thematic maps. I hope more people will engage in this important debate. What is your opinion about 3-D vi...
