A map of worldwide email traffic, created with R by David Smith.
The Washing Post reports that by analyzing more than 10 million emails sent through the Yahoo! Mail service in 2012, a team of researchers used the R language to create a map of countries whose citizens email each other most frequently:
Some discussion of Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, but I have a different question:
If a map is a snapshot of a territory, can’t a later snapshot might show changes to the same territory?
Rather than debating Huntington and his money making but shallow view of the world and its history, why not intentionally broaden the communication network you see above?
A map, even a topic map, isn’t destiny, it’s a guide to finding a path to a new location or information.
Unfortunately, it’s also an example of how data can be distorted to show whatever the researchers want or need it to show. In this case, the arbitrary selection of categories used to color the vertexes implies a pattern where none may exist. African countries: OK, that’s clear but I’m having trouble finding the Latin American continent on a map. Oh, maybe it’s separated into geographic regions. Nope. Hindu, Islamic, and Buddhist are all religions so it must be geography and religion. OK, what color are the Christian countries? Hmm, but then how does Orthodox fit into either of those? Statistics doesn’t become more exact just by adding color, it only appears that way.
Comment by clemp — March 13, 2013 @ 4:48 pm
Good point!
The color elides over divisions that I would otherwise ask about, like where’s Latin America?
It would be a curious geographic map that simply omitted regions. And more noticeable I suspect.
Comment by Patrick Durusau — March 13, 2013 @ 5:48 pm