OpenStreetMap
The OpenStreetMap contributions in Japan from 2007 to 2014 show a fascinating pattern. Why do you think they look this way?
OpenStreetMap contributions in Japan from 2007 to 2014 by Eric Fischer. 2007: blue, 2008: purple, 2010: red, 2012: orange, 2014: yellow.
Discussion
Comment from robert on 22 January 2015 at 23:39
Ew.
Comment from Linhares on 23 January 2015 at 11:42
I think it is because they mapped all the roads and then moved to the details of the country.
Comment from okilimu on 23 January 2015 at 18:27
They made a lot of imports, too. Before 2011, they imported forests. In 2011, after the tsunami and fukushima desaster, Yahoo Japan gave OSM the ability to import a streets in Japan. But the japanese OSM Community is very active, too.
Comment from malenki on 27 January 2015 at 08:22
Like a lot of things the visualized data of Japan may look beautiful – but a close look makes you shiver. I am thinking of the imports I had a look at and for which I assume the most errors still won’t be fixed.
Comment from joost schouppe on 27 January 2015 at 16:00
Because of population density? This is what Japan looks like at night, a good proxy for population density within a country (actually population density * prosperity * measures to decrease light polution). Striking similarity, no. It could be interesting to overlay both images and look for outliers. A bit like I believe members of your team did some time back, but using image complexity in stead of population density as a predictor of expected data density.
Comment from pnorman on 27 January 2015 at 21:00
When did you ship Eric off to North Korea? ;)
Comment from lxbarth on 28 January 2015 at 01:57
Haha, yeah, bad photoshopping :)