Thematic Map of Icelandic Tourism Using Proportional Symbols

Thematic Map of Icelandic Tourism Using Proportional Symbols

"Your assignment for this exercise is to produce a global scale map that includes proportional symbols representing the total number of incoming tourists to Iceland between 2010-2018."

In this exercise I had a lot more freedom to display the data involved (Tourism Data for Iceland). While I had to make use of proportional symbols, I could choose the projection and overall layout of the map document. As Iceland is the focus of the map's data, I tried to choose a projection which placed Iceland at the near center of the map. 

As I previously had not had experience with making proportional symbols outside of ArcMap, this exercise was a learning experience for me. Due to the unique nature of this projection, the size of the symbols had to be right so as to not totally cover up the countries that they are associated with. This took some playing around with, but I eventually was able to determine what the max symbol size should be so that the no countries are obscured. 

This exercise also tested my analytical skills by requiring me to discern and describe patterns among the tourism data. These from what I was able to tell rested mainly in the geographic distribution of the tourists, with the majority coming from countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean (such as the US, UK, etc.). This could be due to a variety of reasons, but the most likely is their close proximity and location on common travel routes. 

Overall from this exercise I learned how to manually create proportional symbols and brushed up on my analytical skills. I now know the general process, i.e. set the largest symbol in terms of covering up features and then create the other symbols after the first size has been set. 

Future Changes: 

- I'd be interest to try a different projection (perhaps a less extreme one) and see if larger proportional symbols could be used. 
- Though circles were used for the proportional symbols on this map, it could have been more beneficial to use squares or triangles instead.