Saturday, March 9, 2019

In another life I may have been a cartographer

[Editor's note: I want to apologize for the unfortunate placement of some of the maps in this post. Perhaps the fact that they are .png files instead of .jpg files had something to do with it. When I tried to manipulate their size and placement the results were simply unacceptable. Just ignore the overlay effect if you can. It is more difficult to ignore the fact that photos in my sidebar obliterate portions of the maps altogether. I am truly sorry. --RWP]

I love maps.

For example, here's one that blogger Graham Edwards included in a post a few days ago. It shows response times in minutes for ambulance calls in England, Scotland, and Wales.


The map is fascinating and, one would presume, accurate. Woe to you, however, if you need an ambulance in the far north of England, most of Scotland, or certain parts of Wales.

Speaking of Graham Edwards, both he and blogger Yorkshire Pudding answered questions in a quiz at the website of The New York Times last week that claimed to be able to produce a map pinpointing one's origins based on word choices one selected in the quiz. Again, the results were fascinating. I decided to have a go at the American version. I hope you will agree that the results are fascinating.

The British Isles version included 96 questions to answer in order to pinpoint the origins of one's speech patterns. The U.S. version has only 25 questions. This seems somewhat backwards in my estimation. Considering that England is about the same size as Alabama, one would think that more questions would be required when covering a much larger amount of territory. Apparently I am wrong.

I took the test twice and Mrs. RWP took it once. The first time I took it I included multiple answers on questions that allowed multiple answers.

Another apology is in order. Since the maps were .png files, I was not able to include the overprint of cities that also were shown. I will name them for you instead.

Here is the map produced from my first (multiple answers) effort:

City names shown on that map were Providence (Rhode Island) and Birmingham (Alabama). Bingo! and also Not Bingo! as I spent the first six years of my life in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, right next-door to Providence. But I also spent 14 years in Texas (no mention), two years in Florida (no mention), three years in Nebraska (no mention), three years in New York (apparently the exception that proves the rule, though I was not in the part of New York most heavily shaded), six more years in Florida, and the last 44 years in Atlanta, Georgia. It is true that our daughter has lived in Birmingham, Alabama, for the past 26 years and we do visit her occasionally, but I have never lived there. So the map is exceedingly accurate in part and exceedingly inaccurate in many ways as well (for example, why California and Nevada showed up is anybody's guess). I do find it interesting that my mother's influence (she was from Philadelphia) is absent but my non-bio Dad's is present (he spent his entire youth and young adulthood in Wisconsin and Iowa).

I took the quiz a second time giving only a single answer to each question, including questions that allowed for multiple answers. The results were quite different:

This time the city shown was Atlanta (Georgia) but no indication at all of Providence or Birmingham. My mother's Philadelphia influence can be seen but my Dad's Wisonsin/Iowa influence cannot.

Finally, Mrs. RWP took the test. She was born in Philadelphia and moved to the Raleigh (North Carolina) area when she was 12. No mention was made of either of those places. Her results pinpointed Birmingham (Alabama) and Jackson (Mississippi). This may be fascinating but it is also just plain wrong.

My conclusion is that the test is fun, but it still needs a lot of work.

I'm sorry to have subjected you to all this. You probably don't find it nearly as fascinating as I do.

Now go out there and take the American version or the British version of the quiz yourself!

13 comments:

  1. I stay in a grey area but haven't heard of any undue delays. A little boy fell out of a tree a few years ago and an ambulance and air ambulance arrived within the hour. I had a look at him and came to the conclusion he was making too much noise to be in immediate jeopardy.
    I suspect folk in built up areas have expectations beyond what they are prepared to pay for.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your maps are very novel. When you have loaded them into the blog draft left click and pick small, you have gone with extra large, I suspect. I go extra large because I make my Blog sing and dance to my tune by going to the HTML editor and telling it. It isn't hard. Computers reflect the operator. Shit in, shit out.

      Delete
    2. I'm looking again and this is not good. You will have to find a local computer literate person to Stretch the body of your template and in the process get rid of the blurry landscape.
      I can show you how to do it with a few screen grabs but can you?

      Delete
    3. Adrian, believe it or not, I used to be a computer literate person. Both IBM and AT&T employed me for years as an IT person. But I am old and out of touch now so my knowledge is way out of date. I appreciate your offer greatly. Can you send screen grabbing instructions to my EEE MALE address (rbrague at windstream dot net)? I may be able to do the rest, although I rather like the blurry landscape.

      Delete
    4. BOB, I'll do it Tuesday. If your template is old I may have problems as old templates are no longer supported by Google. It ought to be sortable.

      Delete
  2. That quiz sounds interesting. I love maps too, especially old maps, and I cataloged many (thousands?) while working in a maps library.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Terra, I had rather look at old maps than just about anything else I know.

      Delete
  3. Thanks for sharing. I have always been fascinated by maps. By the way, what is a cartogropher? I noticed that word in your post title and suspect you meant cartographer. Happy as always to be of service.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Neil, of course you are correct and I meant cartographer. I overlooked "cartogropher" completely, perhaps because it was in the title line and I never glanced at it again. It rather surprised me because I pride myself on my spelling and proofreading abilities. You will rarely find a typo in my posts. My son-in-law found one recently, and now you. I must be slipping. You know what they say about pride (it goes before a fall). Thanks much for the catch.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I might well try it again just giving single answers where multiples are possible. Like lots of people in this day and age who move around, I have lived the majority of my life other than where I was born and brought up, so I may not even know how I spoke 60 years ago.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Graham, no one would [know how he spoke 60 years ago], I imagine. When I took the quiz the second time I didn't try to reach back and figure out which answer I used earliest in my life, I tried to pick the one I use most often nowadays. The two maps, as you saw, were quite different.

      Delete
  6. The premise of the test is certainly interesting.

    I sometimes think about what I might major in if I were going through college again (I was all but directionless the first time around). Well, I could never been a math or hard science major, but I love maps, and I think I might actually pull off majoring in geography. I wouldn't be likely to do it (I would be more likely to study history), but I would certainly explore the possibility.

    ReplyDelete

<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...