I created this map for my cartography class, to show multivariate mapping. The locations were geocoded from the FIRST website team info pages, and team age also retrieved from there. The background choropleth layer I though would be relevant to FIRST, percent of employment as engineers.
This gives a nice visual of the growth in FIRST in the U.S. - does that include all four programs, or just FRC? The background layer of percentage of engineers in the workforce was surprising to see. Some states which I thought would include more engineers were lighter, while others whom I didn’t expect to have as many engineers were darker in color. Nice job!
I agree. This is a very nice map. Lets hope to see this map be all red and pink one day!
Jacob
oh… i think i see us
great gob by the way
I know I see us!
Nice job, and, as someone already mentioned, some surprises for me.
WHAT?! We’re not on there! See for yourself… we should be where the Mississippi bends east to west on the border of IL and IA… grr…
This is pretty cool…
Awesome Job!!! This took some work, but looks fantastic.
What program did you use to graph this?
-j-
and dark blue!
good job
Its nice to have an updated team list, I still have been using the one from 2004
This one shows the team numbers instead of dots, is that possible to do with your program by chance? If not, this is still really cool.
Wow. Check out the explosion of rookie teams in Kasnsas City. Regionals really have an impact on the amount of teams in the surrounding area.
Looks great. I would like to see a world map with FRC, FLL, and FVC.
Hey!!! Don’t forget Alaska and Hawaii :eek:
This is a very cool map…
Could you determine the “mean geographic center” of the FIRST teams?
I’m talking about something like the Wikipedia: mean center of US population.
In 1992, the center of FIRST teams would have been in the northeast (since the majority of the teams were from MA, NH, NY, NJ). Because of the strong growth of FIRST across the country (especially on the west coast), I suspect the geographic center now would be some around Indiana or Illinois. It might be interesting to see the “westward migration” of FIRST.
(BTW: I was in high school near the place where the population center crossed the Mississippi in the early '70s). I’ve since migrated west as well (1978).
That’s nice! I’ve been putting one together just for Michigan, and this will give me some ideas on exactly how to do it! Thanks!
Actually, we’re predominantly second year teams. 2006 was a good year. (Thank you, Kauffman Foundation)
That is a crazy awesome map. Really shows the effect that having a Regional in the area can have, just look at all those team clusters!
I can’t see a few states in the NorthEast :eek:
It looks like a couple trips need to be made to Nebraska and Kentucky!
And I also think Hawaii and Alaska should be on there.
Hopefully soon, we could create an interactive International mapping of FRC, FVC, and FLL teams.
Time to make some predictions.
My prediction for the next regional: Kansas City Kansas/Missouri. lol
(It would give me an excuse to go see some family out there if there was one in the future.)
One of those dots around Cincinnati is team 554 from Ft. Thomas, KY.
It is surprising that there are no teams in the Louisville or Knoxville areas.
Hey look! I can see me waving! 
Damian - very nice work. Another interesting overlay would be to show the location of the competition events. It would be a nice indicator of the correlation between event locations and team concentrations (and where future events should be located).
It would be harder to obtain the data, but it would also be very interesting to map the locations of teams that no longer exist, and when they dropped out of the program. Is there a geographic correlation between teams that drop out of the program and things like distance to nearest regional, distance to Manchester, regional of the country, etc.?
-dave
Very interesting.
One question about Arkansas. I see Bomb Squad in Mountain Home in northern AR but which team is in Central AR (around Little Rock)? I thought 16 was the only team in AR?