Last Lab: Census 2000/2010

In this lab, we learned how to use the data complied of Census 2000 to show the population trend of Asian Alone, Black Alone and Some Other Race Alone in the United States.

The first map shown above is the Asian Alone Population in the United States by Percent. It shows the Asian population across the United States county. According to the website of US Census Bureau, an Asian defines as a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam. From the map, the high concentration of the Asian population existed along the coast. The west coast of the United States has the highest concentration of Asian population. Most Asian settled down in California, and that's why it has the highest concentration of Asian among all the states. In particular, the blue area shows the most percent of Asian. The blue area covers the San Francisco Bay Area. I can tell high concentration of Asian in Bay Area because most of my Asian friends come from the Bay Area. 

The second map shown above is the Black Alone Population in the United States by percent. It shows the black alone populations across the United States county. According to the website of US Census Bureau, Black defines as a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as black or provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian. The South East part of the United States has high concentration of black population. Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and along the east coast has the highest concentration of black population. As shown in the map, red color shows the highest percentage of black population and most of them concentrated in the states I mentioned about. For the middle and western part of the United States, there is not that much of black population. Most area are in the color of green.

 The last map shown above is the Some Other Race Alone Population in the United States. It shows other races that across the United States county. According to the website of US Census Bureau, other races define as all other responses not included in the White, Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander race categories described above. The reason for setting up this category is obvious because some people may not want to define itself as one of the category above and there are so many cultures and races in the world. As shown in the map, most of the some other race population concentrated in south west area of the United States and especially California and Texas. These area has the highest concentration of other races alone population. I guess it is because these states are pretty close to the Mexico. So there are more cultures and diversity among these two states.

By using the Mapping Census 2000 data, we can see the distribution of Asian, Black and Some other races population across the United States. It is fast and easy to connect the data between the census 2000 and the past data in the United States.The Census is a good source of data to know more about the distribution of certain population in the United States. However, I have some concerns about the data. Asian and Black is easily to define by itself. And it is easy to see the distribution across the United States. How about the other race? This category is vague. Some people may not define itself to either category because they may have more than one identity. This may produce an error result in the findings.

I really enjoy this class. Before taking the class, I was confused between GPS and GIS. I thought they were both the same system and GIS is an more advanced system than GPS. After taking this class, I notice GIS stands for geographic information system. It stores different kinds of useful data but not only the position of the world. For example, in this lab, we learned about the distribution of population in using GIS. Learning how to use the ArcGIS is a very good experience for me because I spent a lot of time in using this software. I especially enjoy the weekly lab because I learned a lot of details in using the software. Although I spent a lot of time in doing each lab, I think it may help me in finding jobs in the future. More and more companies are using ArcGIS to view the data and to make map for distribution or statistics.