• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.638-654
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• 2008

A questionnaire survey is conducted to identify the middle school students' abilities to recognize the proportional symbolic maps. After analyzing the data from the respondents, three facts could be concluded. First, the trends of under-estimation are represented as the power function and the degree of under-estimation is increased as the sequence of line, square, circle, sphere symbols. Second, the estimations of symbol size are effected by the number of symbols in the legend(3, 5, 7), the presentation methods of legends(linear, nested), and the system to scale the symbol size(mathematical, perceptual). Lastly, the size of symbols on the map tends to be over-estimated comparing to the symbols in the legend, and the differences between the first year and third year students to recognize the proportional symbol maps are not identified.