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FRENCH KISSES
Bill Rankin, 2013

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This data has been around a while — the main site (in French) has been around since 2007, and the maps have appeared in all the usual places. But these published maps enforce the tyranny of the majority, shading each administrative département with a solid color.

Similar to my other dot maps, I've used pointilist color mixes here to show more nuance in the data. In the original maps shaded by majority, you can't see the continuity in the four-kiss area in northern France, and the five-kiss responses are invisible altogether. I had to do some math to convince ArcGIS to make these consistent patterns, but nothing too complicated.



(Note that this data is from a web survey and should be interpreted with this in mind. For example, I got an email from a Corsican who says that he has never once seen a five-kiss greeting. My guess is that there is a fair amount of noise in the data.)