4 ms·

I hate it when climate pictures just make the highest temperatures bright red. Because using the emotional response to colors is not scientific. It just makes

• ponderingfish 6y ago
  Why? [Trying to learn more about your train of thought]
  • hombre_fatal 6y ago
    "Why" isn't such an obscure question that you need to explain what it means.
• garden_hermit 6y ago
  With temperatures, the blue-red color-map is makes intuitive sense because, culturally, we already have an association of blue = cold and red = hot. The issue though is where to draw the center between blue and red? Like, when do we transition from light blue to light red? The average temperature? the freezing point? And even then, what color goes in the middle? White, grey, and black are common, but not necessarily natural or perfect options. One solution is to use a sequential, non-diverging color map that starts at white/light red, and gets more red with higher temperature (or blue, or green). But then we miss out on that intuitive blue/red relationship, and people may have a hard time interpreting "light red" as a low, cold temperature.
  • SubiculumCode 6y ago
    green goes in the middle...at least in a few colormaps I've seen...oh wait...that's Jet.