During this lab, I was introduced to downloading data sets from the interest, as well as how to import them into ArcMap. In this lab, I downloaded data sets and shapefile census boundaries off of the U.S. Census Bureau. With the downloaded data I: practiced bringing the data into excel and converting it into the appropriate format, joined the attribute table to the Census shapefile, and symbolized the census data to create two final maps.
Methods
I began the lab by visiting the U.S Census Bureau website to download the data. After I selected my perimeters of interest, I was able to select and download the Wisconsin Total Population Census Data from 2010. This provided me both the Census data and a the Census shapefile boundaries. From here I opened the Census data within excel to converted it to an Excel file to be able to use within ArcGIS. I opened up this file along with the Census shapefile in ArcGIS to begin the mapping process. After determining what attribute data column they shared, known as the common attribute, I was able to join their tables together. This allowed me to map both layers together, and symbolize the Census shapefile. These methods were completed again by downloading a new variable of my choice from the Wisconsin County level. I chose to map the percent of individuals between ages 20-24. I did this by repeating all of the previous steps. Lastly, these data frames were arranged into a map to be displayed.
Results
 |
| Figure 1: Maps of the U.S Census or Wisconsin. Left image displays the population per county in WI. Right image displays the percent population of people from ages 20-24 per county in WI. |
Sources:
The data used in this lab was downloaded from the U.S. Census Bureau.
