Week 9- Mapping the Census

      Mapping the census was a very useful exercise. It helped me develop my skills on ArcGIS by starting with the tutorial and repeating the tasks multiple times to make the three following maps. When I finished the tutorial and began to work on my own, I almost immediately had trouble joining the attribute data with the Counties shapefile. I soon learned that I had to change the format of my Excel documents in order to convert them into usable database files. After this, mapping the census was a breeze because I had done all the necessary steps before in the tutorial, just with different data. The end results, the maps, show me the type of power maps have. For all of my maps I chose to divide the counties by five quartiles, but I realize, if I were to have some specific agenda, I could easily plot the same data differently on a map, giving the viewer very different perceptions. Overall, I am impressed with the capabilities of GIS. It can serve as a very useful tool for many people in an array of situations. GIS visualizes spatial data and makes it easy to understand in relation to other data, which is why the technology is so helpful and sought after.

     This map shows the percentage of Asians in the United States. According to this map, the heaviest Asian population is in Florida, New England, and along the West Coast. The central part of the country including the Midwest and South has little Asian population. However, we must remember that the map is broken into quartiles, and in this case, the upper quartile is less than one percent. What this map shows then, is more so the areas of very low Asian population. Every county that is not the darkest color blue, which is 80% of all counties, has an Asian population of less than 0.88%.

     The African American population is broken up amongst the same way as the Asian population, by five quartiles. However, because the lowest percentage of the highest quartile is at 14%, we can see that there is generally a higher African American percentage dispersed throughout the counties. The heaviest African American population is in the Southeastern part of the country. By examining the trends created by mapping the Asian and African American populations, it is evident that there is not much racial diversity in the Midwest and the central northern states (North and South Dakota, for instance).

     On the census website, there is data available for downloading specifically for the following races: white, black, American Indian, Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander. "Some other race" then, would consist of races not previously mentioned, such as Latino or Middle Eastern. If a diagonal line was drawn from Seattle to Houston, the highest percentage of some other race would be the highest to the southwest of that line. Besides in this region, the most populated areas with some other race are in Florida, North Carolina, and in the greater New York and Chicago areas.