Looking at CaBi Stats with a Bubble Map
March 25th, 2012 [programming]
It’s great when companies like Capital Bikeshare make their data available. On their Trip History Data page they have stats for each quarter. I downloaded the most recent one, for 4th Quarter 2011, and created an interactive bubble map, trips4q2011.html, to illustrate the statistics.
The map is based on the one I created for Metro data (see Showing Metro Trips with a Bubble Map), but with expanded functionality. The CaBi data lets you specify registered users or casual users. A control at the bottom let you magnify the size of the circles used. At 1x magnification, a single trip is represented with a circle with a radius of 25 meters (an area of just under 2,000 square meters). Select stations with the drop-down menu or by hovering over it.
The list button will present a textual list of the data, sorting the station in descending order. The compare checkbox lets you compare two sets of values. In overlap mode you can manipulate a second set of bubbles, blue rather than red. The sum and difference modes compare the two sets, displaying the results in a single color.
The program was developed using JavaScript and the Google Maps JavaScript API v3.
[...] Notice any insightful patterns? Ideas for how to improve the tool? Let us know what you discover in the comments below. (The JavaScript behind the scenes was modified from a bubble map made for the 2011 4th-quarter data, which you can see at Looking at CaBi Stats with a Bubble Map.) [...]