Monmonier's Graphic Scripts
Mark Monmonier (1992a) defined a graphic script as a series of dynamic maps, statistical graphics, and text blocks used to tell a story about a particular set of data. Monmonier intended graphic scripts to be a form of data exploration, and thus we have placed them in the "interaction" category. His initial implementation of these scripts, however, was as fixed animations ("movies"), given that users could not control their speed or direction of play. To illustrate a graphic script, consider the portion of a script shown in Figure 21.7, which Monmonier used to examine the distribution and relationship of the attributes "Female Percentage of Elected Local Officials" and "Female Labor Force Participation Rate" for the 50 states of the United States. The complete script consisted of three "acts"
Act I: Introduce the Attributes
Act II Variation and Covariation in Geographic Space and Attribute Space
Act III: Explore the Relationship with a Regression Model