population *density*. Iowa is huge, those 3 million people are pretty spread out

Retric · on July 8, 2015

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Barbara_County,_Californ... only has a population density of 110/sq mi yet it's huge on that map. For comparison the 'low density' Iowa has Des Moines, Iowa with a population density of 2,515.6/sq mi.

PS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_California is a huge blob and only has 2,100/sq mi.

rco8786 · on July 9, 2015

Why are you comparing Santa Barbara county to the city of Des Moines?

Des Moines is in Polk county with a density of 751/sq mi.

Anyways, I was just pointing out that your answer of "no b/c Iowa has 3 million people" has nothing to do with population density as the question posed.

Retric · on July 9, 2015

Why are you comparing Santa Barbara county to the city of Des Moines?

Size on the map is calculated as the sum (property value).

If we chose Des Moines to arbitrarily be a county then its population density would be really high, but it would be an even smaller chunk on the map.

Sure, you might be able to get a reasonable approximation of that map from: population * population density per mile, but population density on its own is not going to get there.

PS: As to why I said mentioned the population of Iowa in the first place, XKCD was a map of population per area. If you scale the map based on population and ignore area then it's just a population map. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/statepop10... Note the west coast is 1/2 the size of the east cost, and texas is about the size of california.