PrintBackground
In this week's project, we use an example from American electoral politics to revisit the modifiable areal unit problem (introduced in the reading for Lesson 1) and also as a reintroduction to ArcGIS, in case you've gotten rusty. This lesson's project is based on a real dataset. You will begin using the Spatial Analyst extension and learn to convert data between different spatial types. The ease with which you can do this should convince you that many of the distinctions made between different spatial data types are less important than they may at first appear.
NOTE: The instructions in this (and other) projects using ArcGIS are given for ArcGIS Pro. You are welcome to use ArcMap if you do not have the ability to install ArcGIS Pro, but we highly encourage you to work with ArcGIS Pro as it is the platform of the future. Esri has now said that there will be no new updates to ArcMap.
Project Resources
- You will be using ESRI's ArcGIS Pro software (or ArcGIS Desktop 10.X) and the Spatial Analyst and Geostatistical Analyst extensions in this course.
As a registered student in GEOG 586, you can get either:- a free Student-licensed edition of ArcGIS Pro.
- a free Student-licensed edition of ArcGIS Desktop.
Instructions on how to access and download either of these are available here: Downloading Esri Products from Penn State.
- The data you need for Project 1 are available in Canvas for download. If you have any difficulty downloading, please contact me.
Geog586_Les1_Project.zip -- A file geodatabase containing the data sets required for the project.
Once you have downloaded the file, double-click on the .zip file to launch 7-Zip or another file compression utility. Follow your software's prompts to decompress the file. You should end up with a folder called TexasRedistricting.gdb, which contains a large number of fairly small items.
Summary of the Minimum Project 1 Deliverables
As you complete certain tasks in Project 1, you will be asked to submit them to your instructor for grading.
The final page of the lesson's project instructions gives a description of the form the weekly project reports should take and content that we expect to see in these reports. In this course you will not only practice conducting geographical analysis but also learn about how to communicate analytical results.
To give you an idea of the work that will be required for this project, here is a summary of the minimum items you will create for Project 1. You should also get involved in discussions on the course Discussion Forum about which approach of the three described in this lesson (polygon to point, KDE, or uniform distribution) is most appropriate, before choosing one.
- Create a map of the RepMaj attribute for districts108_2002 for your write-up, along with a brief commentary on what it shows: Are Republican districts more rural or more urban? What other patterns do you observe, if any?
- Comment on the new Districting plan adopted by the Texas Senate in October 2004. What would you expect it to do to the balance of the electoral outcome? Can you tell, just by examining this map? Put your comments in your write-up.
- Create a map of the 'predicted' electoral outcome for the new districts similar to the original map for the 2002 election and insert it into your write-up. Feel free to provide additional commentary on this topic.
NOTE: When you have completed the project, please submit your write-up to the Canvas assignment for this lesson.
NOTE: If the topic of this project interests you, there is a good and very readable book on the subject of US electoral geography by Mark Monmonier entitled Bushmanders and Bullwinkles: How Politicians Manipulate Electronic Maps and Census Data to Win Elections (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL), which I thoroughly recommend.
Questions?
Please use the 'Week 1 lesson discussion' forum to ask for clarification on any of these concepts and ideas. Hopefully, some of your classmates will be able to help with answering your questions, and I will also provide further commentary there, where appropriate.