Targeting the World

Life is clearly back to normal for most of us in the Boston area - I just heard a woman screaming about her parking ticket. Is there anything in the world more outrageous than getting a ticket? Perhaps Monday's attack on the Boston Marathon. Some terrorist(s) may be trying to target the United States, but as the map below shows they've targeted the world. This map shows the international scope of the Boston Marathon with data from the Boston Athletic Association. You can click to make it legible.

I stole the idea for this from a post on The Atlantic Cities. However, they used a google map with those ugly teardrop points which seem oddly unaligned to the map below. I tried my hand at a good old fashioned choropleth map with the countries colored by number of runners who started the race. I also got to pick a better projection this way (I don't really have a personal favorite projection but I'm somewhat partial to the Robinson.)