GIS5007 - Module 5 - Choropleth and Proportional Symbol Mapping

         Module 5 was about Choropleth and Proportional Symbol Mapping. The map we made this week showcases the population density of Europe population alongside their consumption of wine. I choose to use graduated symbology for the wine consumption as I had a hard time adjusting the size of the proportional symbols individually. I choose Natural Breaks because it handles skewed or unevenly distributed data better than equal intervals or quantiles. Natural breaks help highlight extreme urban areas without forcing uniform groupings. It also effectively group data by identifying natural clusters and maximize differences between classes. Natural breaks also look the best visually out of all the schemes. I choose a green color ramp as it remind me of the grapes growing on the vineyards. I choose purple symbols because it reminded me of the color of wine. 

        For the map, I choose to omit countries with less than 2500 sq km in the attribute tables. I also learned how to use the "data exclusion" feature to get rid of symbols on the main map. I also used "add a selected feature to new layer" to make the inset map, selecting the individual small cluster of countries. I also learned from another student blog to a watercolor texture to the background to make it feel less visually "empty". I would say the hardest and most time-consuming of this project was the labeling and figuring out why my symbols would include countries that were no longer there in the attribute table. Overnight, these "deleted" countries stopped showing up on my map magically and it saved me so much time. But the toughest challenge for this module was tinkering around with how to edit the position of the symbols. I ran out of time and did not find a solution on the internet on how to edit the position of the graduated symbols.