ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the final results of a three-year study sponsored by the British Academy to collect and analyse the most detailed spatial data on UK human geography available, using new geographical information system techniques. It discusses how the geographical information techniques developed to deal with this information could be used in a wider context. The chapter argues that conventional quantitative statistical techniques mask the complexity of the spatial patterns in British society which computer visualisation has been able to illustrate and clarify. Illustrations of various solutions used in the New Social Atlas of Britain are given in the chapter along with alternative techniques and some of the lessons which are learned through trying to visualise so much of the social data which is available for a country, nationally, across so many localities. Cartograms can be used effectively when only a few hundred areas are being mapped.
