The quarter is ending, which means I am nearing the point where I will no longer be using ArcGIS (*tear drop). But, before this ends, I still have one last project to do on the 2000 Census! We took the 2000 Census information and mapped graphs on the "Asian", "Black", and "Some Other Race" populations by percentage of that race in each U.S. county. I got to see the distributions of each race in the United States and was able pick out trends displayed by these maps.
The maps I am about to present were all developed from the 2000 Census. The first map (Figure 1) depicts the number of people in each United States county so we can get a better understanding of the patterns we see in different racial populations. Although this was part of the tutorial, I thought it would be nice to include the map because it gives an overall view of the population in United States. We can then use this map to compare to the other maps and perhaps make some inferences or hypotheses of specific patterns.
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| Figure 1 |
In Figure 2, there are two maps representing the "Asian" population in the U.S. by percentage of Asians in each county. These maps only depicts those who considered themselves "Asian Alone" and no other races. The top map of Figure 2 is a map of the "Asian" population classified by natural breaks. As you can see, there is a concentration of Asians living in the West and Southwest regions of the United States, however, "Asian" populations look like they are scattered throughout the entire continental U.S. For the bottom map of Figure 2, we can see that only a handful of counties have Asians that account for more than 10% of the county population. The results changed in the second map because the classification was changed to equal intervals. Even with the change in classification, there is still a concentration of Asians in the West and Southwest region of the United States. Another pattern to note is the "Asian" populations happen to be coincide with the regions where the population is higher, as seen by comparing Figure 1&2.
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| Figure 2 |
In Figure 3, there are two maps of the "Black" population in each U.S. county by the percentage. The maps only show those who filled out the Census and were "Black Alone". "Black Alone" means the person who filled out the Census did not indicate being part of any other race except for "Black". The top map was classified by natural breaks with a smaller map emphasizing the region with high "Black" populations. This region is the South and Southeast. After changing the classification to equal interval, I noticed the region of high "Black" populations was still prominent. This allows me to conclude that the Southern region of the United States has a higher population of those who consider themselves as "Black Alone". When comparing Figure 2&3, there doesn't seem to be any correlation that occurs. The Southern region is scattered with the number of people in each county, but the "Black" population does make a good portion of each of those counties.
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| Figure 3 |
In Figure 4, the maps depicted those who considered themselves as "Some Other Race". According to the Census, one can be classified as "Some Other Race" if one is not "White", "Black", "American Indian and Alaska Native", "Asian", and "Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander". Those who were multiracial, mixed, interracial, Wesort, and a Hispanic/Latino group were included in the "Some Other Race" category. The top map of Figure 4 shows that there is a high concentration of "Some Other Race" populations in Western and Southwestern regions of the United States when classified by natural breaks. When the map classification was changed to equal interval, the same region was still prominent, which leads me to assume that most people who classify themselves as "Some Other Race" live in the West and Southwest. When comparing Figure 1&4, I noticed that there was a higher number of people in the same region as "Some Other Race" populations. This pattern was similar to the "Asian" population and the number of people in each county.
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| Figure 4 |
In conclusion, these maps gave us a clear image of how each race was distributed throughout the United States. A great feature of these maps was the county boundaries. The county boundaries allowed the user to see patterns for the United States but also for the State and county levels. With this information, we can conclude that "Asian" populations are scattered, "Black" populations are concentrated in the South, and "Some Other Races" populations are denser in the West and Southwest. We are able to see how each race may relate to the number of people in each county, and from this information, we can make inferences or hypotheses of why the distribution is like so. Unfortunately, there is still a pitfall to the information that was presented. Although I had made multiple maps to show the distribution of each race, I only classified them by natural breaks and equal intervals. With that being said, there are many other methods I could have chosen. I chose natural breaks and equal intervals because this allowed me to see important trends that would be consistent over both maps. If I had chosen other methods of classification, then I would have received different results. This is true about the number of classifications as well. If you didn't notice, I changed the number of classes for each figure, and this is because I wanted my maps to show drastic changes. As a result, some of the maps only had 5 classes, while others had 6 classes. In other words, the lesson about maps is that you should always be cautious of what you see and read because maps can be manipulated by the creator!
The End of Geography 7
This class has been a complete rollercoaster. At the beginning of the class, I knew nothing about geography or ArcGIS. The closest I got to understanding space was through Google Maps and other neogeographical systems. I can remember the first day going through ArcGIS and how arduous it seemed going through the tutorial. It took me about 4-5 hours before completely the entire tutorial, and even by the end of the tutorial, I was still lost. As we explored ArcGIS further and began to make our own maps from data, my frustration level rose about 50%. Not only was I an amateur with the functions of ArcGIS, I could not keep up with the TA while he was going through the labs. All this combined with a busy schedule forced me to attend another discussion so I could finish the assignment. As I began to feel more comfortable with ArcGIS, I found functional drawbacks of the program. For example, layers had to be prioritized or else you would only see one layer instead of all of them. Another drawback was the fact that information had to be converted into a particular format, such as the excel table had to be a "dbs" file, or the information could not be opened in ArcGIS. Although ArcGIS had many pitfalls, there were other functions that amazed me. One of my favorite parts of ArcGIS was being able to convert the DEM into a 3D model. It still baffles me how a computer can compute such a complicated model and project it so a user can relate this to reality without actually being there. Another feature I loved was the computer calculations, which made my life so much easier. I could never imagine doing any of this by hand, nor do I know how people use to do it manually. In any case, I have learned more than I had ever expected from this class and from ArcGIS. My eyes have been opened to another world of analysis, and I can't wait to use this knowledge in the future. Who knew geography was so advanced and fun? I didn't! But now I do, and I am glad I took this class!
