LAB 7- Census Data

The map based of the total “Some other” population by county was clearly showing the Latino population in the United States. The map shows that most of the Latino population in the United States is located in the Southwestern part of the Nation. The population mainly lives in the states: Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. These states make since for why they have such a large Hispanic population because they are close to Mexico, therefore many of the people who emigrated from the country stayed relatively close to the border. Some interesting phenomenon’s that I noticed about the map were, that there is a large Latino population in Northern Washington State, which I have no explanation for. Another aspect of the map that I thought was very interesting was the fact that the Latino population was mostly clustered in the part of Texas that touched Mexico and that most of the Northeastern part of the state had a very minimal population of Latinos. Another aspect of the map that was extremely interesting to me was the fact that the Midwest and states like Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming has the lowest populations of Latinos, this does make sense though because these are the farthest places from Mexico.

                The map based off of the total “Asian” population demonstrates that most of the Asian population in the United States is mostly on the West Coast, and mostly in California. There is still some significant numbers of the population on the East Coast, more centered in the northern part of New England. What I found most interesting was that Orange County has one the great Total Asian populations in the nation. This makes sense to me because Orange County is home to places like little Saigon, and that a lot of refugees from various wars fled to Southern California. Overall I was shocked at how little the Total Asian population was spread out over the entire United States, and that the population is only concentrated into a couple small areas, basically only on opposite sides of the country

The map that shows the total “Black” population by county shows that most of the African American population is concentrated in the South. The states were most of the population is located is Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina. This makes since to me because of the history of African American culture with the south. Historically African Americans were forced to the United States through the slave trade, and they were brought to the south. Therefore many of the former slaves after being freed remained in the south. Therefore the population that lived there today is the descendants from the African Americans that were forced to be slaves. A few things that I found interesting about the map are the fact that the African American Population is small in Florida, but the surrounding states near Florida have a high African American population. The map shows such a high concentration of African Americans in the south that it’s hard to read the map, and to see the individual county lines.  Another aspect of the map that I found very interesting what that a major part of the African American population follows the southern half of the Mississippi river

                Overall this lab was very interesting, and easy to work with. It was very interesting to see how different populations of races are in the nation. On my map my only challenge was that the color scheme I picked to demonstrate the percent’s of the different populations made it very confusing to see the different percent’s based off color. Another problem in the creation of my maps was removing Alaska and Hawaii, but I did this by just zooming into continental US and leaving Hawaii and Alaska outside the Layout view. My overall impression of GIS has changed over the quarter and first I was very frustrated with ArcGIS and found it very hard to operate, but now I find it very easy to use and manage. Also I think that GIS is making individuals who work in Census date, jobs very easy now, because they can easily create maps like the one I just did.