> For example, California has 58 counties, but Kentucky has 120. That means that the "resolution" of the data in California is half as accurate as the data in K

> For example, California has 58 counties, but Kentucky has 120. That means that the "resolution" of the data in California is half as accurate as the data in Kentucky despite having ten times as many inhabitants and 4 times the land area. Kentucky also simply looks larger, which over-indexes its importance. I can't really think of any data that I would want visualized by county directly, especially data about people. In California alone, there is a 9000:1 population variance between the largest and smallest county.