Mapamundi by Christian Parsons

We humans have been making maps of the world since the beginnings of our culture, from the babylonian Imago Mundi to the latest big data based digital maps.

Here a new world map is created from a geometric interpretation of data:

A high-dimensional space is constructed from socio-economic data about countries using different data sources.

Each country is a point in space and each metric is a dimension (around 100 dimensions for the current map).

Using dimensionality reduction (TSNE), clustering (DBSCAN) and topological data analysis (Kepler mapper), the points in high-dimensional space are projected and embedded in two dimensions.

The result is a flat map that approximates the shape of data in high-dimensional space.

A new world map with different borders and regions emerges. An image of a different geography, not the physical geography of rivers, mountains and deserts, but a geography of people, lives and human activity.

The entrant has supplied multiple files for this project:
[1] [2] [3] [4]