Choropleth Map using Python

A choropleth map is a shaded map where the intensity of the colour indicates the intensity or quantity of a particular feature. In Data Science, the choropleth maps are used to visualize the distribution of a feature in a geographical area. In this article, I will take you through how to visualize a choropleth map using Python.

What is a Choropleth Map?

Choropleth maps are shaded maps that represent the intensity of an entity by indicating shades of dark colours on regions with high intensities of an entity and light colours on regions with lower intensities of an entity. 

For example, a world map that shows the regions of the maximum covid-19 cases for a particular month will be showing the regions with varying intensities of the blue colour. Here the dark blue colour will represent the highest affected areas by the covid-19, and the light blue colour will be representing the areas with comparatively fewer covid-19 cases.

Choropleth Map using Python

I hope you now have understood what are choropleth maps and why they are used. Now let’s see how to visualize a choropleth map using Python. For this task, I will be using the plotly library in Python. So let’s import the necessary Python libraries and the dataset that we need to visualize choropleth maps using Python:

  code       state category  total exports  ...  total veggies  corn  wheat   cotton
0   AL     Alabama    state        1390.63  ...          14.33  34.9   70.0   317.61
1   AK      Alaska    state          13.31  ...           1.56   0.0    0.0     0.00
2   AZ     Arizona    state        1463.17  ...         386.91   7.3   48.7   423.95
3   AR    Arkansas    state        3586.02  ...          11.45  69.5  114.5   665.44
4   CA  California    state       16472.88  ...        2106.79  34.6  249.3  1064.95

[5 rows x 17 columns]

The dataset that I am using here is based on the agricultural exports of the United States. Now let’s see to visualize choropleth maps with this dataset using Python:

Also, Read – Python Projects with Source Code.

Summary

So this is how you can visualize choropleth maps with Python by using the Plotly library in Python. There are more data visualization tools in Python that you can use for this task but to visualize a choropleth map Plotly library is best in my opinion. I hope you liked this article on how to visualize a choropleth map using Python. Feel free to ask your valuable questions in the comments section below.