How to Map Open Data
One of the reasons we love maps so much is that they expose so much more information than can be communicated through tabular data. Yet, there are thousands of public Excel documents, Wikipedia HTML tables, and government CSVs with really interesting stories to tell. All that's required to unlock these insights is a human like you to highlight, copy, and paste into BatchGeo. You can keep the resulting map to yourself, or pay it forward by sharing with friends, co-workers, or the greater community.
It's easier than you might realize to get started with open data. This tutorial will walk you through an example from Wikipedia—one of thousands of lists the editors have compiled—showing the tallest buildings in the world. Below we'll show obtaining a dataset, cleansing and reducing the data, plotting the locations on a map, and sharing it with the world (or just the people you choose).
Copy the Wikipedia Data
The tallest buildings data is listed in Wikipedia as a standard HTML table. Using your mouse, you should be able to highlight the entire contents of the table by clicking and dragging from the upper left to the lower right of the table. Sometimes the initial header may be hyperlinked, so you may need to start your highlight outside of the table.
