Dot Density Maps

This week we had to take some Florida population / housing unit / land area data, in Excel calculate housing density (I used housing units per land area rather than per total area) and create a map of housing density, using Adobe Illustrator again.

I ended up creating two maps because we had a lot of confusion about which we should be doing, raw housing unit (or population) data versus density (units per area). I wanted to see how different the maps would look. In the end I haven't really answered this question well because in the density map for some reason I didn't position the dots as randomly as in the housing units map. The dots in the housing units map are also very slightly larger than those in the density map - 0.8 pixels instead of 0.7 pixels each. I had tried selecting all the dots and then transforming them "Each", but when I did this with large transformations the dots moved as well as expanding/contracting, so I haven't really solved this problem. Overall the maps look quite similar in terms of county-to-county relative amounts of dots, despite differing distributions from map to map within the individual counties.

I feel more comfortable with the housing units map, or at least with the idea of mapping raw data with dots rather than density with dots, but I could see mapping density at the county level if the data were census tracts or something finer than county level. I would like to try this exercise out in ArcMap. I haven't yet learned how to make a template (assuming this is possible) in Illustrator, which may be why not all of my map pieces are identical - the north arrow is in a slightly different place in each, for instance.

Other than that and my gradual lessening of alarm while in Illustrator, I learned how to make a north star a la the cartography text, which pleased me.