Using an area-based indicator for a value makes little sense when the map already uses graphical area to encode for physical area, and where the density of the value varies inversely to this physical area. The use of color fills in the map makes much more sense. The important question the chart crafter must ask is whether the values or their geographic distribution are more important to the display.

The bubble analogy is the dots used for representing cities on a map, with different sized dots for city populations within a certain range. Business Week obviously tried this, but a cartographer uses dots which are small compared to the distance between cities.

What’s wrong with a bar chart? We can use the actual number, not a range, and sort them by this number. A second cut might show a heat map of the states, but even this is distorted by variations in population density.