Lab 7 Census

Census maps that show different percentages of different races
In this lab, we are to make three different maps that show of  ‘Black’, ‘Asian’ and ‘Some Other Race Alone’ across the continental US, ranked by percentages, by ‘joining’ spatial and attribute data and setting the color ramp which makes it easier for the reader to understand the map without really looking at the attribute table in ArcGIS.

This is a map that shows the data of counties with a black alone population that is greater than zero all over the United States, ranked by percentage. We can tell the distribution of black alone population by seeing the different colors on the map. The lightest yellow represents the lowest percentage and the reddish orange represents the largest percentage. As you can see on the map, the southeastern part of the United States got the highest percentage of black alone, for example in places like Alabama and Georgia, since they have the darkest color in their areas on the map.   

This map represents all the minority group, which excludes the Caucasians, Blacks and Asian, population percentages in Census Bureau in 2000 all over in the United States. From the map, it shows that the other races alone population are mostly concentrated in the Southwestern part of America,  places like New Mexico, Texas and California, since they have the darkest purple in those area which indicates the largest other races only population.

This map shows the Asian population percentage throughout the United States Continental area. It depicts that highest percentage of Asian is located around and in California. And in some Northwestern areas, like Washington, have  some considerable amount of the Asian population too!

Overall, from those three maps,  they show that different groups, the blacks, Asians, and other minorities, tend to be having high percentage of their specific ethic group in a certain region. And also, the bigger cities of the country tend to attract bigger percentages of minorities. And coastal areas seems to have higher percentage of ethical group population, too. 

My overall impression for GIS is that it makes everything simple, it is time-saving way to introduce some kind of specific data since we can analysis things by looking at a map instead of reading a lot but still not know what it says. It is a professional program as well as user-friendly, it is hard to use GIS for the first few times since I am totally not a computer person, but it is fun to make stuff by myself and I really enjoy doing maps in GIS. Through the visualization and symbology, we now do not even have to get back to the Excel file or attribute table in order to find information, it is clear on the map showing different colors that represents different percentage. GIS is a really useful software.