Lab 2 - Wisconsin Population and Median Age by County

Background Information:

The purpose of this lab was to become familiar with bringing in various data sets, checking their data integrity and then using these data sets to make them visually pleasing. We focused on using the United States Census Bureau for getting our data. Being that it was the Census Bureau we were not too concerned with the quality and source of the data. We were to create a map with Wisconsin's population by county and also a map presenting a data set of our own choice.

Methods:

The first step was getting comfortable using the U.S Census Bureau's website. By following this hyperlink you are brought to the Fact Finder Census Bureau Website. To acquire the population information for Wisconsin select "people" on the left hand side of the page and from there "basic count/estimate." From there scroll until you find the desired information, in this case it was total population and download it.

To acquire the Wisconsin shape file, go to "geography" on the left hand side of the page. To get all the counties click "state" then "counties" and select "all counties" for the state of Wisconsin.

Once downloading the desired files you have to unzip the newly acquired attribute tables. View the tabular and metadata in Excel and be sure the change the CSV file in to an MS Excel Workbook file. This allows the data to be used in ArcGIS.

From there I added the shape file to ArcGIS and also my unzipped MS Excel Workbook file. It is important to check the attribute table and verify all the data carried over and is not corrupt or missing.

To join the shape file and Excel table there has to be a common attribute to link them together. In this case, they both shared a GEO#id so the tables were linked together through that.

Now that my data was linked, I simply had to change the symbology under properties and change it to graduated colors so differences in data could be easily recognized and visually appealing. There was no need to normalize this data set.

To create the second map I essentially followed the exact same steps except with a different variable this time. The first map focused on a total population dataset while for my second map I chose median age. Fortunately the common attribute between by shape file and data set was GEO#id so that step remained the same. My second data set had three variables so by using the meta data I was able to pick which variable I wanted to present. I chose median age for both males and females in the state of Wisconsin.

Because I was focusing specifically on Wisconsin, I changed the projection for both data frames to NAD 1983 Wisconsin TM.

 

Results:

Figure 2.1 The map on the left presents the population of each county while the right map shows the median age by county.

 The graphic above shows two different maps made of Wisconsin. By looking at the map you can see that population and median age are directly related. In more populated counties there tends to be a trend of a lower median age.

Sources: United States Census Bureau. (2015, March 20).