ABSTRACT
In this chapter we get to know how to think about thematic maps, and how to create your own maps of this variety. Thematic maps focus on representing the spatial pattern of a variable of interest (e.g, crimes, trust in the police, etc.) and they can be used for exploration and analysis or for presentation and communication to others. Will discuss various types of thematic maps and the issues they raise. We will introduce in particular two common types of thematic maps used for mapping quantitative variables: choropleth (thematic) maps and proportional symbol maps. We examine different classification systems: equal interval, quantile, natural breaks (jenks), standard deviations, and headtails. We consider issues of mapping rates versus counts, and introduce tmap package for making thematic maps.
