Monday, February 18, 2013
Northern Ireland- Religious Distribution
Northern Ireland has always had a strong religious background.
Catholicism is the most prevalent of the religious sects. This study is
a good idea of "lying with maps". The map below shows the percentage
of Catholics in certain areas of Northern Ireland.
This next map refers more to the mingling of different religions. In another way, it refers to the areas having multiple religions.
So the first map is representing only one religion being prevalent in areas, the second map shows the inter mingling. First of all, both maps' color schemes are off, in my opinion. Usually red is used to display high concentrations and things like that and blue is used to show low concentrations or things like that. If one only looks at the first map, one would think that Northern Ireland is extremely segregated religiously, especially around Belfast. However, considering high population in comparison to other parts of the country, the second map shows how much more diversity there is in that area. Actually, the areas toward the borders are actually those with the least amount of religious inter mingling. This is just a case where having multiple maps to display information is more helpful than having only one map to avoid lying with maps.
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I like the way that you compared the two maps and pointed out the ways in which the first map is misleading. I also agree that the color schemes are off. I too was mislead by the use of red and blue. With that being said, I am still a little confused about what the second map is representing.
ReplyDeleteThose colors are terrible! Even after looking at the two maps for over two minutes, I still couldn't really decipher what I was seeing. There doesn't really seem to be a tend in where Catholics live at all, I think. Maybe a gradient color scheme would make more sense with rising percentages? Or maybe I know nothing about Catholicism in Ireland, who knows.
ReplyDeleteBesides the maps being misleading, it seems that politics and stereotypes played a huge role in the map as well. I would be interested to see how the author gathered their data.
ReplyDeleteThis map did seem misleading. I did begin looking at the map as if the red areas were the higher concentrated populations. It would be interesting to compare the religious views of Ireland from current populations and pre-independence (1950's) time period.
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