Administrative boundary reorganization poses a problem for cartographic analysis of social, demographic, and economic variables because data sets created before and after reorganization are incompatible. Weighting methods are often used to translate data between different boundary configurations, but these can introduce substantial error. An alternate method called "strategic amalgamation" can resolve the problem of data conversion while adding little or no error. Strategic amalgamation creates an entirely new set of upper level areal units based on combination of lower-level units, thus largely avoiding the need for weighting.