Contiguous States of US

CS 725 Information Visualization - V7

Christos Tsolakis

Order: Alphabetically by number of contiguous neighbors

Show also paths of length 2 :

Comments :

1. Querying for the existence of a specific path of length 1 is easy, e.g TX (Texas) is contiguous with (AR) Arkansas
• However, it is difficult to find paths of length more than one between states e.g. Is there any path of contiguous states from Washington to Virginia ?
2. The rearranging capabilities of the matrix make the task of finding which states have more contiguous neighbors than others easier than the node link diagram

Node-link Diagram

Comments :

If someone wants to travel through all the states he/she has to go through New-York (NY) since it is the connecting
link between VT (Vermont), MA (Massachusetts), CT, VI (Virgin Islands), RI (Rhode Island), ME (Maine), NH (New Hampshire) and the rest of US
ME (Maine) is the only state that it is accessible through only one state.
FL (Florida),SC (South Carolina),DC and WA (Washington) are accessible only by two states, you can easily see that since they are on the boundary
of the graph and connected only with two other states.
Moreover one of the advantages here using the node-link is that it is very easy to derive a route between states.
So, every topological/connectivity-related attribute can be easily acquired.

Matrix code is heavily based on : https://bost.ocks.org/mike/miserables

Node-link code is heavily based on : https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4062045