For my final data visualization project, I chose to work with a data set showing the populations of different cities along the Silk Road at different times.
I wanted to create a visualization that would allow users to go between the different time eras to see how the populations of the different cities changed over time.
In my visualization, the data is represented as dots at the latitude and longtitude of each city, whose size is based on the population of the city at the time shown.
To interact with the visualization, try hovering over each dot to see the name of the city and it's population, and press the 'd' key to fast forward fifty years in time and the 'a' key to go back fifty years.
One interesting thing I noticed during this project is how as the time period changed, some cities grew in population while others got smaller. I thought it was neat how this reflected what we learned in Humanities about how different empires and powers rose and fell over time.
Something I still wonder about is what was the main reason that the populations of the different cities changed? Was it because of reproduction, or because the concentration of people between the different cities shifted?