week 8 census mapping

The following census maps are created using the United States Census Bureau data in 2000. With ArcGIS mapping, the data make sense better than just figures.

1. Population percent of African-American people in America

It is quite obvious that black people tend to live in the southeast part of America, from Virginia down through the Gulf Coast to eastern Texas. The concentrated black population areas coincide with the slavery counties, which indicates that most black people there might be the descendants of the slaves imported from Africa. The so-called "Black Belt" area is known for its high crime rates and concentrated poverty.

2. Population percent of Asian-American people in America

Asian-American population is much less than African-Americans, and they are highly concentrated in California, Seattle and New York. Asian-Americans tend to live in urban areas, where it will be convenient for doing businesses. California is the most settled area, because its geographical location--it is convenient for immigrants who travelled by boat into America to settle down. And of course, the historical reasons like Acts against Asian immigrants and quota regulations also contribute to the old family tie in California, where some undocumented immigrants firstly come from US-Mexico border.

3. Population percent of other races people in America

Other races category is an aggregated population that includes Latinos,multi-racial people and so on. They tend to live in the west of America, which indicates that most of them are not from Europe; and they also tend to live near borders, which indicates that most of them might be immigrants from Latin-America.

4. Conclusion

These maps can be used together with other theme maps to judge the coincidences and relationships among different factors. For example, we can compare the African-American population percentage map with the slavery maps, and we can see why black people tend to live in south America.

Clearly different races have different geographical living and working tendencies. We can see from the map that minority groups tend to live in a concentrated form and that maybe explained by racial discrimination and segregation. We still have a lot to do to develop a mix-race society and more public attention should be drawn to concentrated minority living areas with high rates of crime and poverty, and more education supports should be brought into these areas.

Overall impression of GIS

I have got the elementary idea of how ArcGIS works and I've learned the basic ways to operate the system. GIS offers a good way to visualize data and analyze them. The abstract figures are turned into beautiful maps which are much easier for people to understand, and it's easier for people to make sense of different factors if they put different layers together and see the coincidences. 

From the first impression of selecting interesting maps (lab 1), to create our own maps using ArcGIS under the help of TAs and tutorials (lab 4), visualize them in different projections (lab 5) and even get a 3D version (lab 6), I've learned not only where those functions are located in the system interface, but also the ideas of presenting data in a neat and clear way. This class is a good start to learn more about GIS, and it's also an interesting one.