Goals: The goals of this lab were for the use of obtaining GIS data and standalone tables from other mediums (US Census Bureau) than the mgisdata already downloaded from ArcGIS. Then with that data being able to join them with other tables, and being able to manipulate data, excel sheets, to make them joinable and readable by the software. Specifically the goal was to find the total population by county in Wisconsin, then to find a variable of our own choosing to map as well (Total households per county).
Methods:To start this lab I had to obtain census data from 2010 specifically in Wisconsin, so to do that I had to do an advanced search through the American Factfinder website that the US Census Bureau operates. Starting with topics and choosing the year, then to geographies to pick specifically counties, then Wisconsin and finally I downloaded the zipfile. After which I opened the shapefile of Wisconsin and its' counties, but the county population data was not joined yet from the excel sheet. So I had to manipulate the data sheet so ArcGIS would read it as a number file not a string file, so it could be joined to the shapefile and mapped onto the layer. Once properly formatted and joined I opened up the data's properties/symbology to map the total population per county, then I classified the breaks by quantiles. After that I copied the Wisconsin county map to a new data frame to map the other variable (Total households per county). To get that data I had to again go to the American Factfinder website that the US Census Bureau and repeat the process except I downloaded the total household file. Again I had to reformat the excel sheets so they could be read as number files and able to be joined and mapped on ArcGIS. I then repeated the process in the symbology tab to map the total household data by quantities per county in Wisconsin, again by quantile breaks again. I then formatted the maps in the layout view to exported.
Results:
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| Figure 1: Maps showing the total number of households per county in Wisconsin, and the total population per county in Wisconsin.
The results show that some counties in Wisconsin that are in the highest quantile for total population are not in the highest quantile for total number of households per county, which might suggest that some counties may have larger families.
Sources:
1. Price, Maribeth (2014). Mastering
ArcGIS 6th ed. Retrieved 3/11/15.
2. US Census
Bureau (2010). 2010 SF1 100% Data. http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml.
Retrieved on 3/11/15
3. US Census
Bureau (2010). 2010 SF1 100% Data
Households and Families: 2010, http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml.
Retrieved on 3/12/15
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