How to Create a Choropleth Map showing Count of Members by Postal
Code
A choropleth map, sometimes incorrectly called a heat map, can help you understand where your
members live in your section. This can be useful when deciding where to hold face-to-face meetings that
are located close to your members.
A choropleth map is a type of map in which a set of pre-defined areas, such as postal code regions or
geopolitical regions are colored or patterned in proportion to a statistical variable within the area. The
colorations correspond to geographic or political boundaries, whereas the coloration in a heat map
doesn't correspond to boundaries.
The examples below show how one can create a choropleth map from membership data in OU
Analytics. As an important reminder, any data obtained from OU Analytics including these maps must
be used for IEEE business only. See the IEEE Data Access and Use Policy at https://www.ieee.org/ieee-
data-access-and-use-policy.html for more details.
Note the map builder tool we're going to be using only works for US locations. If you know of a tool that
works for other countries or a better tool for US locations please let us know!
Example 1 – Choropleth map of IEEE section members
In this example, a choropleth map will be created for the Boise section in Region 6 showing the number
of IEEE members by zip code.
Step 1 – Gather the count of section members by 5-digit zip code
In IEEE OU Analytics, bring up the Members and Affiliates worksheet and select the "Geographic Counts"
tab. Note this will let you get counts for section members by postal code.