lab7 Census 2000/2010

This map shows the percent of black population in the U.S counties. In the map, the counties colored the darkest red represent the highest percent, while the lightest colored counties represents the lowest percent. It is obvious that the black population is scare along the west coast, which is less than 5%, but mainly located at the southeast part of counties, from Mississippi to Virginia. The reason for the black race distribution may be the Civil War, which left many African Blacks settle down at the east coast.

From the second map, we can find that compared to black population, which is dominated only on the east coast of counties, the Asian population is evenly distributed across the counties. It is easy to find the areas covered by darkest purple, such as California, Washington, and New York City, have the highest percent of Asian population. This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that Asians have to cross the Pacific Ocean and pass by the west coast to the U.S counties, and that New York City has a high rate of immigration all the time.

The third map represents the percent of some other race population. From the map, we can find that the population of some other race is mainly concentrated on the southwest part of U.S counties, from west coast, like California, Arizona to the mid-west of U.S, like New Mexico and Texas.

 These three maps are based on the census data and are really informative. They together can offer the audience a full picture of the racial population distribution in the U.S counties, which is crucial in policy and government decisions. Audience can easily find the area where certain race is dominated, and get information like where immigrants always choose to settle down, and where to choose to plan an event for a certain race.

My impression for GIS is that it is a beneficial and useful tool in mapping, although my experiences with GIS are often frustrating, as this time I had some trouble in exporting the Excel to .dbf. But all in all, the process of inputting the data from census allows us to use a broader range of information easily and directly, and it is really inspiriting when I successfully transform the data into representations of actual maps. GIS is well designed for learners to manage data and create maps, but the operation is not easy, as we need to have some backgrounds of GIS. Also the output of map is significant.