The Scale’s The Thing

We look at turning layers on and off at chosen scales to make for a better map. Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: A fellow of infinite jest. With all due respect to Hamlet and Willie the Shake, this time we’ll look at an oft underappreciated side of mapping: scale dependency for layer visibility. […]

Think Globaly, Extract Locally

We use Zonal Statistics as Table to extract raster data to polygons…but not without some frustration. In our last instalment we covered extracting global data to a set of 15,831 points. I’ll show those points again below to jog our collective memories. As we saw, it’s proved a challenge in many ways that could occupy […]

The Point(s) of the Data

We extract values from a range of global datasets to points for some E. coli analysis. Ah, Paris! The beautiful Seine! As the Olympics slowly fade from memory, some may recall that our triathletes were exposed to E. coli in the Seine River and experienced some unpleasant and performance diminishing gastrointestinal distress. I, too, have […]

Lessons Learnt from Muddy Boots

Last weekend was a glorious, bluebird weekend and I was lucky enough to head out on an early season tramp with daughter number 1 (number 1 in terms of birth order; they’re both number 1 in my book). What could possibly go wrong? Only that I’m getting to be an old man and my knees […]

Never Underestimate a Nematode

We look at how some simple data exploration can help us better understand spatial problems. Postgrad Ella has a thing for nematodes, but who am I to judge? As someone once said to me, with a bit of a sigh, “People will research anything…” Actually, nematodes are quite important to understand, especially if you’re a […]

Vector Makes Its Mark

A cornucopia of vector tools help with some marking While both students and academics are celebrating the end of another semester, it may well be a bit short-lived. Poor students have exams to cope with and poor academics have scads of marking to endure. One of the GIS courses has recently done a project on […]

Model Behaviour

Using ModelBuilder to automate a repetitive task No question – GIS can certainly be frustrating. And it doesn’t get any less frustrating as you get better; the problems just morph into more complex things. Lately, I’ve been wrestling with a particularly vexing problem that on the surface should have been easy but in practice made […]

Getting Maps into Reports

We quickly cover how best to incorporate map layouts into written reports In this special edition, I’ll cover how you can better incorporate your maps into things like reports or theses, or wherever they need to end up. We often focus on stand along maps where everything that is needed. Maybe they end up as […]

Bi(variate) Curious

Using Bivariate Symbology on a map of housing prices We’ve been looking at different mapping strategies lately and this time we’ll look at an uncommon one, uncommon enough that people are likely to be curious about how it works. I will admit that I, too, have been curious, having never really used it before. The […]

The View from Forbes

As most everyone will be aware, the Burns Building is slowly being demolished. I doubt that many will mourn its passing, but I’m no architectural critic. What I can be critical about is views. In my new digs in far reaching Forbistan (Ed. you mean the Forbes Building, right?), I was checking out the view […]