Cartogram- California

http://world-geography.org/121-cartogram.html

Geographic cartograms do not depict actual space, but rather bend space to show different attributes.  These cartograms allow us to move past the depiction of physical space and more into social parameters.  The above image shows three different cartograms that exist: non-contiguous, contiguous, and dorling.  Non-contiguous allows the individual areas to be detached from their neighbors while contiguous boundaries are bent to accommodate the different sized areas.  The dorling cartogram uses a uniform, non-overlapping shape that is proportional to the attribute that it is representing. 

The above map is a cartogram (in all 3 types) of California.  In these maps, they are all representing the population in each county of the state in slightly different ways.  In all of the cartograms, we can see that the population in the southern parts of the state greatly outnumbers that of the north.  This can be attributed to the large cities such as Los Angeles that exist.  Getting into a little bit of critical geography, I believe that the map that best represents this population attribute is the non-contiguous cartogram.  This is because it does not distort the shape of the counties and is therefore easier to read and understand.  Both the contiguous and dorling cartograms can render the counties unrecognizable.