Perception of colour scales used in thematic cartography by young people aged 15-17

There are many different types of datasets represented by maps in thematic cartography. It is possible to represent features and phenomenon referencing to area as well as to point. Furthermore, it is possible to represent qualitative data as well as quantitative data. There are many different ways to represent them. One of the most important and most used cartographic symbols of lettering is colour, resp. colour scales, which are chosen according to shown data. This article is focused on the perception of colour scales in relation to character of data. For experiment, a new questionnaire was created on the basis of colour scales classification. This questionnaire was posed to the students of years 1 and 2 of high school in order to find out how they perceive the colour scales. The study analyzes three main questions; whether students differentiate qualitative and quantitative datasets and corresponding colour scales, whether they prefer representing of features by context colours or by the colour they like more and whether they are familiar with principles of diverging colour scales. When processing it, the correlation between certain agents and the answers was established.