I am by no means good in statistics, but I think I have come to the right place.
My question is simple:
My problem consists of comparing the population of several states in a small country, but some states have a population of 3000,000 and some a population of 2,000.
I am painting it on a map, and the "intensity" of the color depends on how the population of every state compares to the population of the whole country.
The problem is that the states with a lot of population are shown with really intense colors and the small states barely have any color.
Is there an easy way to "normalize" or make the data comparable?
I dont know if I am explaining myself properly but I hope some one can help me.
Please comment if my question is not clear and I will clarify.
Thank you for your help!
Best Answer
I'm sorry, but to me it sounds like you are trying to fix what isn't broken. In fact, you might even be trying to break what isn't broken. When you have a quantitative variable (here, population) that spans a wide range, then whatever metric you use to represent it should also span a wide range.
But for all things related to color (and esp. maps), the key source is, I think ColorBrewer