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Covid Geographic Diffusion Interactive

How Does a Pandemic Travel? | Do Geography Lab Do Geography Lab · Spatial Diffusion How Does a Pandemic Travel? Follow COVID-19 across the United States, test whether distance predicts its arrival, and discover why a pandemic moves through networks, institutions, and unequal systems of surveillance—not simply across empty space. The central wager If disease spreads from person to person, should the map expand outward like a ripple? COVID-19 offers a rare test because several diffusion processes operated at once. 1. Predict 2. Follow the waves 3. Test distance 4. Build an S-curve 5. Decide A geographical question Which connections matter when something contagious moves among places? Read every map twice Reported cases measure surveillance as well as infection. 01 Prediction Choose your model before seeing the evidence Do not search for a pattern after you already know the answer. Make a prediction that the map can disappoint. ...
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Take Me Out To The Ball Game: Geography and Central Place Theory

Take Me Out to the Ball Game | Do Geography Lab Do Geography Lab · Urban Systems Take Me Out to the Ball Game Major League Baseball may eventually grow from 30 clubs to 32. Where should the next two teams go? Build a market, draw its territory, and discover why the neat geometry of central-place theory collides with the unruly geography of actual cities. EXPANSION COMMITTEE 30 clubs now 32 possible future YOUR PICKS · 0 /2 1. Find the threshold 2. Draw the market 3. Break the model 4. Award the teams Central-place theory asks How large a market is needed to support a high-order function? The geographical trap A city’s population is not the same thing as its market. 01 Threshold How many people does a team need? Set three assumptions. The model calculates the minimum market needed to sustain your attendance target. Annual attendance target 2.4 million Games attended per fan 2.4 per year Residents likely t...
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Newtons Migration Model Interactive

Newton's First Law of Migration — Do Geography Lab Do Geography Lab · Migration Newton's First Law of Migration Can population and distance predict who moves to Minnesota? Build the model, confront the evidence, and investigate the places where human geography refuses to behave like physics. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Often attributed to Einstein. Migration models live on that dangerous boundary. 1. Make a prediction 2. Test it 3. Map the failure 4. Repair the model The wager Large states have more potential movers. Nearby states impose less cost, risk, and friction. Therefore migration should rise with population and fall with distance. The test A useful model is not one that never fails. It is one whose failures teach us what the model left out. 01 Make a gravity-model prediction The constant k is calibrated so total predicted migration equals the total of the published state flows. You decide how strongly distance should deter...
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