Smart Mapping: Counts and Amounts (color)

A layer of points, lines or polygons lets anyone see the location of these features relative to one another. Very often, these features on the map have numeric attributes associated with them. How can you discover and visualize meaningful patterns from these numerical attributes? How do you ensure the colors relate to meaningful numbers in the real world, so that the patterns provide useful comparisons?

Color on a map is used to help readers immediately see where places are similar and where they are different. A logical use of color on a map does more: it also encodes how big or small those differences are, something we can see at a glance.

The Counts & Amounts (color) drawing style in ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise applies color to your layer's features, based on a numerical attribute you choose. You can vary the features' colors on the map when you want to compare them based on an attribute containing an average, mean, median, rate, ratio, percent, index or other normalized data.

Smart mapping helps you create beautiful and informative maps, quickly, using color. It sets the cartography of your layer based on the significant values within your data.  Smart mapping  lets anyone quickly discover patterns from attributes in their data and make meaningful maps from them. 

This guide introduces easy ways to use color to discover and emphasize interesting stories in your numerical data. If your data has a numeric attribute field, it’s easy to color each feature on the map based on that field's value. Within five or six mouse clicks you will be looking at a first draft of your map. 

Smart mapping helps you create beautiful and informative maps, quickly. The map's defaults jump start your exploration of the data, helping to discover meaningful values that shape the story of the data. Let's get started.

You have seen how smart mapping in Map Viewer works alongside you, helping you focus on your topic and ask questions of your data. Choose an attribute, explore the drawing styles and themes within each style, adjust your breaks on the color ramp to use meaningful numbers, and lastly choose a color ramps that accentuates the data's story you wish to tell. Don't know which story to tell yet? Choose the "Above and Below" theme to prompt some thinking about what a meaningful "normal" value, or a goal, might be.

In just a few steps, you applied color to your layer's numerical data using the Counts & Amounts (color) drawing style. Coloring a polygon, line or point is appropriate when you choose to map a normalized number such as an average, mean, median, rate, ratio, percent, or index. If you want to map a total or count, use Counts & Amounts (size) drawing style, or Color and Size drawing style.

You saw many ways to explore your data using themes like "High to Low" and "Above and Below", as well as classification methods like "Natural Breaks" and "Equal Interval." Each has the potential to reveal a story in your data, within a few clicks.

With smart mapping doing the heavy lifting by taking the guesswork out of setting your map properties, you can freely explore new patterns and stories you did not know were present in the data.

Try it out today, and when ready share your maps with the hashtag #smartmapping and #ArcGISOnline.