Cartogram and Choropleth

This particular study by Petzold has discovered that Wikipedia has more than 270 languages varieties.  For example, Wikipedia provides different versions of  Chinese which includes mainland Chinese, Singaporean and Malaysian version of simplified Chinese, Taiwan’s orthodox and Hong Kong’s traditional Chinese. Choropleth and Cartogram are used to ‘analyze if geographic and linguistic affinity has helped or hindered Wikipedia language versions to evolve’ (Petzold, 2011). The Choropleth acts as an indicator to show the linguistic development across the world. While the Cartogram shows the proportional size of a region to the population of the dataset (Petzold,2011). Follow up of these mappings for a few years will present the researchers with visible linguistic development in Wikipedia. Image 1 show an example of an Cartogram shows the total number of Wikipedia articles in Europe where English seems to be dominating.

Image 1

Network graphs

Network graphs represent the interconnection between languages. The language nearer to the centre of the network graph is considered to be the more universal language. Network graphs show a core-peripheral structure where researchers can analyse the extension of links among languages which restores, strengthens or changes the hierarchical relationships. Network graphs also work as a form of benchmark for the cartogram results analysis (Petzold, 2010). Image 2 is an example of a network graph of chosen language varieties of Wikipedia.

Image 2