Week 8: Census Data 2000

    The Asian population is more dense in the West Coast as well as the North Coast. This is probably due to the massive Asian immigration to the United States a few generations ago. The result of the immigration is that immigrants seeking higher living standards tend to linger around in the more urbanized areas such as Los Angeles and New York City. In contrast, in the northern area of the US, the counties are covered in green - meaning that less than 1% of the population are Asian. The reason of this may be the result of traveling routes of the immigrants: they usually arrive in the US through the coastal areas and tend to stay there. The county with the highest concentration of the Asian population is one among the west coast - almost half of the population identify themselves as Asian. 

   The Black population is mostly concentrated in the southeastern tip of the United States. Due to the unfamiliarity of the US history, I cannot be certain of the reason of this concentration. One interpretation of this may be that this is the result of the slavery history until the 19th century. Similar to the Asian population, we can see that the black population tended to linger in the coastal area where they lived during the past and had not moved to other areas so much. This may be because of the cultural difference of the different races in different areas. In the north, there is again less concentration of the black population - generally less than 3%. The area with the highest concentration has a black population percentage as high as 86.4%.

    Some of the other races has the highest concentration in the southwestern tip of the United States. Again, one interpretation of this may be that the immigrants with hispanic roots tend to enter the States from the southwestern direction, since Mexico is in that direction. Interestingly, the county with the highest concentration of these races is significantly lower than that of the black population: 30% compared to 86.4% mentioned above. The cause of this is not clear: whether it is because people in this category are more scattered than Asians and Blacks or it is because the overall "other race" population is less in the United States could not be defined. In addition, the definition of "other race" in the census data could make a difference and should be taken into account when interpreting this data. 

The ArcGIS experience

    With the introduction of ArcGIS in this course, I have come to realized that geographers are of significant influence in both the private and public sector in our economy. As an economist, one thing that interests us is "incentive". People act on their incentives and incentives come from people's past experience or base knowledge of a certain material. Powerful maps and other GIS materials created by ArcGIS are good tools of leading people to understand certain materials in certain ways. Although maps are presentations of the reality, the process of map creation selects and arrange data in such way that lead viewers to certain conclusions the map makers intend to.  

     With that said, ArcGIS as a user-friendly data management and map creation tool is a very good assistance for not only geographers, but also businessmen, politicians and policy makers. An example of the use of map uses in marketing strategies is the case of Verizon advertising its coverage of 4G LTE network across the nation. With ArcGIS, more and more users could make full use of the beauty of maps in various industries.