Protobi

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<p>Protobi provides a number of ways to summarize location data in geographic maps.</p>
<h2 id="geographic-maps">Geographic maps</h2>
<p>The most direct method is a chloropleth map, which shows geographic regions
in a map projection and colors the regions according to a metric:</p>
<p><img src="/images/blog/2018-12-30-squaires/chloropleth.png"  style="margin: 0 auto; width:480px; max-width:480px; display: block;vertical-align:top"></p>
<p>The above map shows US states, but it's also possible to show other 
divisions such as country, county or ZIP.
</p>
<h2 id="stylized-maps">Stylized maps</h2>
<p>The challenge with using actual geo projections is that small populous 
states like Rhode Island appear tiny compared to large rural states like Wyoming.</p>
<p>A cool approach is to equalize states and display each as a uniform square or hexagon,
aligned roughly corresponding to the geography.</p>
<p>The following uses Wall Street Journal's <a href="http://wsj.github.io/squaire/">Squaire</a> algorithm:</p>
<p><img src="/images/blog/2018-12-30-squaires/squaire.png"  style="margin: 0 auto; width:480px; max-width:480px; display: block;vertical-align:top"></p>
<h2 id="bar-charts">Bar charts</h2>
<p>Of course for simplicity there's always the simple bar chart which clearly 
shows relative frequency for each geographical region:
<img src="/images/blog/2018-12-30-squaires/bars.png"  style="margin: 0 auto; width:400px; max-width:90%; display: block;vertical-align:top"></p>
<h2 id="google-maps">Google maps</h2>
<p>Sometimes respondent geo data is very micro.  Universities often need to see
student data from countries down to specific high schools.</p>
<p>For instance, maybe you have
street addresses and want to display them on a map as clickable markers
with detailed information on hover.  </p>
<p>You can write a process in Protobi
that uses Google Location API to geocode street addresses into lat/long locations, 
and display them in Protobi as an interactive Google map.</p>
<p><img src="/images/blog/2018-12-30-squaires/google-map.png"  style="margin: 0 auto; width:400px; max-width:90%; display: block;vertical-align:top"></p>
<h2 id="advanced-custom-maps">Advanced custom maps</h2>
<p>With geo data, the way you need to show the data may be very specific to your project.
Here's a visualization of longest flight times by <a href="https://codepen.io/jwasilgeo/pen/wQVXep?page=4">Jacob Wasilkowski</a>.
It's possible to create interactive visualizations like this within your Protobi project.</p>
<div id=flights class=flights >
    <canvas width="400" height="400" style="display:block; margin: 0 auto;"></canvas>
    <div id="routeInfo"></div>
</div>

<h2 id="contact-us">Contact us</h2>
<p>Geography might be just one question in your survey. 
But chances are there's something unique about your specific goal --
from the way locations are represented to what information you want to show.</p>
<p>Contact us at <a href="support@protobi.com">support@protobi.com</a> to discuss your design goal.
Our support team can help you quickly set that up.</p>

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