My project team is making a site that will use reddit style voting to track users’ opinions on various issues, and use the data to create a “heat map”. I say heat map in quotes because I’m not sure that it’s the correct term – I don’t have the math to express it properly.
The idea is you’ll be able to see, on a 2 dimensional graph, how your opinons compare to those of other voters in your municipality, and to politicians currently running for office. This will help voters make more informed decisions about voting.
I’m not sure how to code this or even what to start googling for. Can anyone suggest a direction?
** I’ll change the title to something more useful when I have more information, sorry
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Perhaps some research is in order.
Are these other opinions continuous (a curve over the range), or discrete (a scattering of dots)? A heat map is a way to present discrete values in a way that appears continuous, but it depends on large numbers of values.
It sounds like you could benefit from some basic theory:
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi
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