For the Grammar of Graphics language-based approach to visualization, and therefore in the RAVE visualization system, maps are simply another element that can be used within the grammatical formulation.
Although most people consider a map a very different entity from a bar chart, all that really differs between a bar chart and a map of areas like the one included here is that instead of representing a row of data by a bar, we use a polygon (or set of polygons) on a map. Otherwise their properties ought to be the same — we can apply color, patterns, labels, transparency. We can set a summary statistic when there are multiple values for each polygon to reflect min, max, mean, median, range, or any of the regular sets of items. We can flip, transpose and panel the charts. Essentially, from the grammatical point of view, if you can do it to a bar chart, you can do it to a map. The only limitation is that whereas the sizes of the bars can be set or determined by data, the map polygons cannot, so setting sizes on the map polygons has no effect.
Orthogonality is also important — so we can say we want a point element instead of a polygon, as in the above where we’ve added a second element to a RAVE US Map conveying different data as well as being a good place to put labels
