[Click to view the whole map].
A map plotting Murders in the year 2008 in the Washington area.
I think this is a good example of a well-done density map.* It conveys its information effectively. The story behind it is that somebody has been scouring police reports from local counties/cities, plotting them spatially at their reported street location, and including some minor info in each case (name, date, address of incident, cause of death). This is only 2008 data, but the guy has also done past years, mapped elsewhere on his site.
Here is the 2008 plotted data: http://www.burgersub.org/murders2k8.htm.
Each little flag is the instance of a single murder so far in 2008. It is not surprising to anyone with basic knowledge about this area that they mostly occur in the eastern part of the District of Columbia and into P.G. county. The only other places that any have occurred at all this year are scattered cities (like Manassas) with many immigrants and gang activity. GMU is in a safe part of Fairfax County: There has only been a single murder around here in 2008. Just a mile or so north of the GMU campus, some poor sucker named "Adulio Bonilla-Morales, 36; stabbed [to death] on 8/16/08". A little north of there, some other guy is listed as having been "shot by Fairfax County Police" at his house (that's the blue flag).
I am fascinated by this map.
* - (They aren't technically "dots", but in effect they are-- They plot single locations of single events. Which is actually more precise than most dot-density maps, I suppose, which are generalized).
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