Week 12: SAT Scores Final Project

Attached is the figure (including caption) that I generated mindful of an general readership audience of a typical newspaper. This figure would prevent a standard black-and-white printing because of the critical need for color, however, this figure offers a suitable color scheme for a standard three-color press. I had to download a shapefile from the U.S. Geological Survey because the one that the class used for the Chloropleth Map assignment did not have any georeferencing (i.e. when I tried to insert a legend, it indicated that the country was approximately 2 miles long and the shapefile would not accept a new coordinate system). Further details about this figure will be submitted directly for review.



Here is my proposed caption because the one on my map is more than 50 words:
The one on the map is probably more suited to a magazine...my choice would be the Weekly Standard. :)

CAPTION:
National average SAT scores are compared among states by bar graphs that show deviation of each state from the average. Positive bars indicate state performance surpassing the average while negative bars indicate poorer performance. State participation rates (green shading) are lower in the mid-west where ACT exams predominate.

Week 11: Google Earth

The state of Ohio can boast its efforts to harness alternative energy sources, wind energy being a significant subset of these alternative technologies. The literature that I read through suggests that there are two optimum locations to set up windmill fields, Lake Erie off-shore sites and the northwest regions of the state. These are areas where wind velocities are sufficiently high to make energy production viable. Also, they are areas that would least impact Ohioans from turbine noise, ice shedding, and light flicker. I have identified an off-short location that is with the state jurisdiction of Ohio, is not going to affect shipping lanes, and will not be too close to shore where marshland duck hunting is very popular along with other recreational activities.



I found a map generator for Lake Erie in Ohio at http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/website/OCM_GIS/MapViewer_app/OCM_MainMap/dbGroupToc/myfiles/nsc_metadata.htm. If you link to the entire address, the website will bring you to tables of metadata that are not directly useful. However, by trimming down the web linke, a map viewer locator function opens (http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/website/OCM_GIS/MapViewer_app/OCM_MainMap). I activated layers related to shipping, navigation, and recreation and export the resulting map.



The wind velocities across Lake Erie are greatest on the south side of the lake (within the county boundaries of Ohio). So I found a bathymetric map of Lake Erie at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/greatlakes/lakeerie_cdrom/html/e_gmorph.htm. The location that I propose for the windmill field is off-shore, within the boundary limit of Cuyahoga County, OH (county of Cleveland, OH), and affords optimal wind velocities. The bathymetric map of the area suggests that the basin floor is between 20 and 25 meters below the water surface. This is certainly shallow enough for pilings to be driven down into the geologic base of the Niagara Escarpment to effectively anchor the windmills without incident. The windmill fields would not impact apparent shipping channels and the population would not be affected by ice shedding, noise, or light flicker. The only concern might be for the safety of migratory birds (duck and geese species), however, this is an issue that must be considered for all such operations.

Week 10: Isarithmic Maps

Attached is an isarithmic map of the mean annual precipitation in Georgia. The contour lines were based at 5" rainfall levels. I saw Brandon Isenhart's map while I was working on mine and I liked his legend...I thought it was effective...and resisting the temptation to imitate, I made a more traditional legend where there was not gap between the color symbols.

Week 9: Flow Maps (my better attempt)

Hi Trisha...please note that this is not intended to be my bonus exercise...I wanted to have a history of my own decisions about "good" maps and bad maps. Please use this post for scoring my Week 9 assignment...thanks! :)

Well, I finished my first map and posted it, and then I wanted to go back and make it better ... so I used this lab as an opportunity to delve into greater details with AI. I still find some of the program to be cryptic ... my only real gripe is that I cannot figure out why sometimes the zoom tool permits a "zoom out" option and other times a different dropdown window is activated that does not have the zoom in/zoom out function. ...I am on a mission to figure out the key strokes that toggle between these two dropdown windows ... because it is REALLY difficult to zoom back to the full extent if you can't activate the darn zoom out tool! :) On a more serious note, I think I have created a better flow map in the second go-around.

Week 9: Flow Maps

The attached map shows the relative influx of permananent legal U.S. citizens originating from the various regions of the world. The map-type is referred to as a flow map where the width of each flow-arrow is proportional to the relative numbers of individuals successfully moving from one place to another. I created a literally accurate legend based on the data from which the arrows were made because there were a manageable number of values (9) to put in the legend without the legend becoming too cumbersome. I learned much more about AI although I find many of the tools to be cryptic and hidden in less-than-helpful places. The program also seems to be inconsistent in many ways...for example, with the zoom tool, one time you can right click and access the "zoom out" function, but then, with what seem to be the same key strokes, there is a completely different drop-down menu and no clear way to "zoom out". Most good software packages have more than one way to do the same function...AI seems to be lacking in this flexibility and so you would truly have to become "expert" with its use before you could feel a reasonable level of comepetence with the software as a whole (still expecting good things though!).

Week 8: Dot Map Assignment

This is a dot distribution map of the available housing units in Florida counties. The source of this information was the US Census 2000 data from Census Table GCT-PH1, Population, Housing Units, Area and Density: 2000. Although I had calculated the Housing Density and Population Density from this data set, I determined that it would be most appropriate to use the raw data for housing unit numbers and to place the dots in inhabitable areas (as directed by the course materials). By using the raw data and proper placement of the dots, the "housing density" is summarized by the resulting density of dots in the inhabitable regions of each county. Other presentations of the data might want to use the inhabitablt area of a county when calculating the housing density or the population density. This assignment introduced me to yet another type of map that has significant application value for certain types of data presentation. :) ...I liked it! OOPS, just realized I forgot to put my name and data on it...will update later.

Week 6: Chloropleth Maps (part 3 - update)

Well, I realized that I didn't understand the instructions the first time around, so I decided that I should go back and try complete this assignment the right way! :) Working in ArcMap, I created new layers for each division and I changed the base colors to match a chloropleth legend scale. However, there was a layer detail that I couldn't identify that kept making the New England Division a darker gray than I intended...so I selected each New England state in Adobe Illustrator and changed the gray to a lighter tone. I'm not happy with the scaling on Alaska and would do a few other things to improve this map aesthetically, but I will focus on these functions in future assignments. Argh...that was a matter of back-tracking to catch up from two weeks of being inundated with my other work. ...back on track now !!! :)