My five links:

I got most of my information from: www.deathpenaltyinfo.com.

I found some interesting historical data on executions here: http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/execution.htm. But I can't be entirely sure as to the veracity of it due to it just being some random person's website.

The original Chernoff Faces map: http://go.owu.edu/~jbkrygie/krygier_html/geog_353/geog_353_lo/geog_353_lo11_gr/turner_chernoff.jpg.

And while I make neither an argument for no against the death penalty with this map, I will point people to http://www.prodeathpenalty.com and http://www.antideathpenalty.org. But I have not read their literature but they seem to be on the up and up.

final project: second iteration

I changed the colors a bit. The light face has remained the same but the other two have lightened up a bit. The red is less intense now and instead of being white, the other states are green. I added a third color also. I was trying to keep any of the colors from jumping out because I am not trying to argue in either direction with this map. I am hoping that the legends all work. There is a lot going on and a huge number of symbols that need to be defined. It looks like everything is easy enough to read. I think it all works though. Let me know if there is anything that needs to be tweeked.

final project: take one

This is the first iteration. And to be honest I would be happy if it was also the last. But I know that is not to be. My fonts don't all match. Hopefully the three different size of face can be easily identified. I am trying to figure out another way to illustrate things intead of the smile. And I think the mixed eye symbols work. I had to make this a simple chloropleth also because there are 3 states that have the death penalty on the books but haven't executed anybody. I also need to line up the methods symbols on the legend. Does the rest of the legend work or is it confusing? Are the colors a problem at all?

Happy turkey day you poor bastards of North Cakilaky

This is about as good as it gets by my hand. I have finally been a little creative when it comes to legend design and background. I think it turned out pretty well. Dr. Leslie thinks it looks a lot better than the roller skating cows. But he is still talking about that map even though he may not like it. Martha helped me a bunch with the legend layout. Now that I am done maybe she can get her work done.

the new--or rather vastly improved--color map

It was hard to do the colors by hand. I did not want to just take a color scheme straight from colorbrewer.org though it would have been easier. And it may have looked a bit better but this is a learning experience and I have learned that with a bit of work, good colors can be done by hand. It just takes longer. Much longer. Compared to the gray-scale version, this is perhaps easier to read. But I spent a few years doing black and white photography as a hobby and I think I can pick out subtleties in gray better than others. The way I displayed the data has huge swaths of the country falling into the same class and therefore are the same color. The eye did not focus on the middle gray tones in the same way as the middle green that I used. I actually prefer the gray-scale version and think that had I just tweaked a couple of the tones, it would have been more presentable.

and while i am at it--WV

3rd post of the day but separate from the other 2

here are the goofy rollerskating cows that people have been talking about.