I'm making a map which displays score results for river reaches. The score results are integers from 1 to 7.
Now I want to make a legend and color code my results. However, I don't want to use too many color shades as the human eye/brain is not really able to distinguish clearly between more than +/- 5 shades.
So my question is: how do I divide my 7 (non-continuous) score results into 5 categories for my legend?
I thought of the following options:
legend 1:
- result = 1 - 2
- result = 3
- result = 4
- result = 5
- result = 6 - 7
legend 2:
result <= 1.4
1.4 < result <= 2.8
2.8 < result <= 4.2
4.2 < result <= 5.6
result > 5.6
My issue with the first legend is that I would be visually tricking my audience into thinking that the extreme values are more prevalent than they actually are. My issue with the second legend is that my result values are not continuous, so in reality the second legend looks like this:
result = 1
result = 2
result = 3 - 4
result = 5
result = 6 - 7
So again, my data will be visually skewed and deceiving my audience.
What are proper ways to handle this type of situation? Or any similar situation for that matter (for instance for 9 or 11 or 13 result values)?
Thanks!