Week 9: Flow Maps

The attached map shows the relative influx of permananent legal U.S. citizens originating from the various regions of the world. The map-type is referred to as a flow map where the width of each flow-arrow is proportional to the relative numbers of individuals successfully moving from one place to another. I created a literally accurate legend based on the data from which the arrows were made because there were a manageable number of values (9) to put in the legend without the legend becoming too cumbersome. I learned much more about AI although I find many of the tools to be cryptic and hidden in less-than-helpful places. The program also seems to be inconsistent in many ways...for example, with the zoom tool, one time you can right click and access the "zoom out" function, but then, with what seem to be the same key strokes, there is a completely different drop-down menu and no clear way to "zoom out". Most good software packages have more than one way to do the same function...AI seems to be lacking in this flexibility and so you would truly have to become "expert" with its use before you could feel a reasonable level of comepetence with the software as a whole (still expecting good things though!).