[3maps # 1] European Travel Patterns, the true size of Africa, if 7 Billion...

In the 3maps series, I'll try to share with you, each month, a selection of 3 interesting maps that I'll have found on the web.

Connecting

European Travel Patterns by Eric Fischer

European travel patterns by Eric Fischer

We find more and more maps representing connections from social websites like Twitter or Facebook. These maps are interesting to watch because of their dynamics. Also, they successfully unveil some connectedness aspects in the real world.
One of the artists I appreciate in this domain is Eric Fischer. His work is mainly based on Twitter and cabspotting data.

This map was created this way:

"60,000 trips (of 20 or more miles each) through 750,000 randomly-chosen geotags, grouped with 10-mile radius, from the Twitter streaming API, August, 2011."

Eric Fischer is a Twitter Mapper virtuoso. In this map, he manages to transform massive virtual data into a river-like landscape.

Comparing

The true size of Africa

The true size of Africa by Kai Krause

With the map above, you can really figure out how big Africa is.


If 7 Billion People Lived In One City, How Big Would It Be?

If 7 billion by Tim De Chant

As one's always attempted to compare things relative to one's own references, relativeness is an efficient way to represent data. In a different manner from the map of Africa, this concept is used in the map above where it takes the population density in different main cities in the world and apply the 7 billion world's population to USA to see how it would fit. It gives an idea on the different densities of cities in the world and on how space can be saturated to the maximum.