Sergio Álvarez • Sep 6, 2016

Creating Category Maps with CARTO Builder

Recently we’ve written about creating Data-Driven Maps with CARTO Builder and apart from creating maps dependent on ramps for numeric values, sometimes you need to create maps that show geospatial features grouped visually under different categories. For example, when analyzing different types of crimes, stores by branch, or tweets by term.

Now that you are familiarized with the possibilities of changing some visual parameters BY VALUE, try to color your points, polygons, or lines depending on a string column. We recommend coloring your spatial features only when most of the data fits within the top 10 categories. As you can see above, it’s as simple as:

• Click on the layer name
• Click on the Style tab
• Click on the polygon color
• Click on BY VALUE
• Select your desired column

To create category maps with numeric columns, you will need to select ‘Category’ as the quantification method. You can also change some colors by clicking on each of the terms used for the different categories.

Check out the CartoCSS panel and the TurboCarto repo to learn more about how this works behind the scenes.

Happy data analyzing!

About the author

Sergio has spent years bridging the designer-developer divide and making products to improve the way that decisions are made. He has a background in computer science and currently researches data visualization, information design, and interface design with a special focus on data interaction.
In 2009, Sergio co-founded Vizzuality, a company dedicated to visualization, analysis, and cloud-based services for large amounts of data, with offices in Madrid and New York.

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