Maps
Tile-grid map
Represents regions by equal-sized tiles in an approximate geographic arrangement.
- Map
- Geography
- Comparison
What it answers
How do regions compare without unequal land areas?
- Shape
- Equal-sized tiles in approximate geography
- What it shows
- Regional contrast without area dominance.
Example
The question
How does each county compare, with every county the same size?
Sales growth by county, equal tiles placed roughly by geography (%)
Illustrative data. It belongs to no company.
When to use it
Use it when
Giving every region comparable visual prominence.
Avoid it when
When precise geography or adjacency is required.
How to read it
Read region labels on equal tiles and compare colour values.
Note
Tile area does not encode the supplied value.
The data you need
- Layout
- Attribute table plus geographic boundaries
- Fields
- RegionID: text; Value: number; matching polygon geometry or geographic boundary source
- One row is
- One region and its measured value. What is the grain?
- Rules
- Join data to boundaries with stable IDs. Declare geographic level, boundary version and coordinate reference system.
- Optional
- Names alone may be ambiguous. Geometry can be GeoJSON, a spatial file or a tool-supported boundary lookup.
- Preparation
- Choose or obtain an explicit region-to-tile layout and join values by stable region ID.
- Units
- Every region has equal tile area; colour/symbol encodes the value. Tile area has no magnitude unit.
Worked example
A and B occupy equaltiles, valued 30 and 45. B's colour indicates the larger value; tile area is constant.
| RegionID | Value |
|---|---|
| R1 | 30 |
| R2 | 45 |