Cartographic Skills: Final Project

Every year in the United States, high school students are able to take a standardized test called the SAT that tests their knowledge in three particular subjects which are math, critical reading, and writing. Each subject is graded separately at first and then added together to give the composite score result. These composite scores are a requirement to get into most colleges across the United States. In 2014, CollegeBoard.org gather data from each state of their high school students’ participation percentage and the SAT mean scores in the three subjects that students were tested in. Based the data gathered, Washington Post wanted to utilize this information to write an article regarding the high school seniors and college entrance scores. This data was to be displayed by using a map to illustrate the SAT mean composite scores and the participation percentage by state.

The thematic method that was used to create this map was the choropleth mapping technique which allows the mean composite scores to be display by each state across the United States. The composite scores were classified by using five classes and the Equal Interval classification method. The Equal Interval classification method was used due to the fact that this method has each class placed at an equal interval along the number line. Using this method, map readers are able to interpret the information easily and there are not gaps in the mean composite scores on the legend of the map (Slocum, Thematic Cartography and Geovisualization, 2009). Another thematic method that was used was a loosely-based dot mapping technique which was executed in Adobe Illustrator. The ellipses were placed in each state which they had the participation percentage information.


The reason why this map was created was to cartographically show the SAT mean composite scores in each state, as well as the participation percentage of high school students, that occurred in 2014; however, the final product of the map needed easily understandable to the audience reading the Washington Post article. The orientation of the map is set to landscape mode which encompass all of the data more effectively and does not look cluttered. Gestalt’s Principles of figure-ground was implemented when deciding the blue color scheme of the choropleth map that would allow the states stand out from the mute light green-gray color background. Also, visual hierarchy was utilized as well when making the participation percentage ellipses a beige color so the importance of the number data that was being convey in each state would be more evident.