How MapBees scores a hex (explained simply)

First, what is “the score”?

When you open the map, the whole city is covered in little colored hexes. A hex is one hexagon on the map, about 350 m across (roughly 0.1 km²). Each hex has a single number behind it - a score from 0 to 100 - that answers one simple question: how good is this exact hex for what I care about?

You read it by color. Bright yellow means a strong match, and dark purple means a weaker one. That is the whole idea - you can scan an entire city in seconds and instantly see where the good hexes are.

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Think of it like a report card for every hex

A student's report card blends grades from several subjects into one overall result. MapBees does the same thing for every hex: it looks at the “subjects” you pick - MapBees calls them factors - and blends them into one easy score. No spreadsheets, no math - just one number you can compare.

The quickest start: a ready-made question

You do not have to pick factors from scratch. Press Questions & guides and the Question Library opens. Many of its questions open a ready-made Score - one for each of ten kinds of business, from Café (“Where should I open a café?”) to Bakery, plus a few broader ones such as Most people, fewest shops. Café, for example, scores the whole city on people nearby, fewer competing cafés, transit, and shops and offices around.

A question only sets the map up. Every factor it adds is an ordinary factor you can change, remove or add to, exactly as if you had picked it yourself.

An example with four factors

You can also choose the factors yourself, from measures in five groups: Building volume, Places, Population & age, Affluence, and Accessibility. Add a file of your own points and a sixth group, Your data, appears beside them. Here are four factors a typical score might use. You do not need to understand the data behind them - just what each one means in plain terms.

If you want the full list of measures you can choose from, see the supported measures catalog.

Watch four factors become one score

Here is the magic, in motion. Each of the four factors is its own map of colored hexes. MapBees stacks them up and blends them together into a single hex - and that final color is exactly what you see on the map. Press play and watch it happen.

You do not have to do any of this yourself. It runs automatically for every hex in the city at the same time. The animation is just showing you what is happening behind one of them.

You decide what matters most

Here is the part that makes the score yours. Back to the report card: a school can decide exams are worth 80% and homework 20%. MapBees lets you do the same - you choose how much each factor counts. MapBees calls that its importance, and says it in words: Not counted, Less important, Important or Very important, judged against an equal share - so three factors at a third each all read Important. Slide one up and the whole map re-scores instantly.

You can also flip a factor's direction. For most things, More is better (you want more demand). But sometimes Less is better - for example, you might want fewer competitors. Every factor carries one of the two, and one tap flips it.

Try it - drag a slider and watch the score change.

In the full app, each factor has its own card in the Selected settings panel beside the map, with its importance slider, its direction and how it is counted. Above the cards, the importance bar shows every factor's share of the Score as one colored piece.

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Three extras on every factor

Each factor can do a little more than count, and each has its own post:

• Range - keep one span of the factor's values, such as the top 30% of hexes by residents, and either hide the hexes outside it or give them fewer points.
• Usually nearby - on a factor that counts one kind of place, the kinds of place found within a 10-minute walk of it more often than across the city.
• Same pattern - tap a factor's piece of the importance bar to see which measures rise and fall with it across the city. Two factors that follow one pattern very closely get a small same pattern › bracket under the bar.

Two cards at the bottom of the Add measures pop-up change how all the factors work together: How each factor is placed and How the factors combine.

Reading the colors

The legend in the corner of the map is your key. It runs from dark to bright, with its two ends in words: Weak match and Strong match. By default every color covers about the same number of hexes, so the map always uses its whole range of colors and the brightest hexes are always the strongest ones for the way you set things up.

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It has a few controls of its own:

• The arrows on either side give Coarser or Finer map colors - fewer or more distinct bands.
• The Score menu above the bar holds the map's colors: a choice of palettes, Color by - Equal share of hexes (the default) or Even value steps - and Hex transparency.

No black box: see exactly why

A score is only useful if you can trust it, so nothing is hidden. Hover any hex and its hex card says why it scored the way it did: for each factor, the points it added out of the most it could add, where the hex stands among London's hexes, and - for a factor read within a 10-minute walk - plain counts of what is in the hex and within the walk. Its last line names the factor that held it back most.

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Under the default way of combining, the points add up to the score exactly: 33 + 32 + 24 is the 89 above. A 10-minute walk here means the places you can reach on foot within 10 minutes, along streets and paths, nearer ones counting more (full weight under 3.5 min, 70% to 7 min, 40% to 10 min).

The whole Score, in words

At the foot of the Selected settings panel, Show the math opens the Score's method card: one line per factor in plain words, how they combine and how each is placed, the formulas used and the sources with their years. Copy card copies it, so a colleague can see exactly how a map was made.

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Where are the top hexes?

You do not have to hunt for the brightest hexes by eye. The Rank button, next to the Map type picker, opens two lists. Ranked hexes picks the top hexes - Top 10 or any number - and, with Show numbers on hexes, numbers them right on the map. Below it, Standouts finds the top-scoring groups of nearby hexes and outlines them, so a shortlist of neighborhoods is ready in a glance.

Open this Score of London

The whole idea, in five lines

• Every colored hex is a 0–100 score - brighter is a better match.
• Questions & guides for a ready-made Score, or pick factors yourself from five groups (plus Your data).
• You decide each factor's importance and direction; Range, Usually nearby and Same pattern do more with each one.
• Hover any hex for its hex card - points, standing and plain counts - and open Show the math for the whole Score in words.
• Rank numbers the top hexes and finds the Standouts, ready-made shortlists.