What Could Explain the Reason for the Patterns Noticed

C. Cox

The purpose of this map was to compare both Prince George and Colonial Heights’ elderly populations, and to compare the changes these two locations undergo when their maps were normalized. The data collected shows that Prince George County has a higher elderly population than that of Colonial Heights; this isn’t much of a surprise due to the fact that Prince George also has a higher overall population. This is why normalizing took place, so the percent of elderly in the two places could be compared and contrasted. In both places there is a very noticeable difference between their tracks when displaying people of 65+, and when those tracts were normalized to the Population of 2007.

The projection had to be set to start the map so it was set to WGS 1984. Then the counties file was used to find the two locations used in this project. During this process MapTips was used to find the two locations, Prince George and Colonial Heights. The VA census tracts file was then added to the initial data frame. Dtl Counties was then clipped to the VA tracts and exported to the Virginia geodatabase. The identify tool was used to find the state county FIPS codes for the places used. The select by attributes tool was needed to select those locations by Age of people 65+ and exported as its own file. Once the two cities were separated all of the original work was done in one data frame before they were copied and pasted. Both Prince George and Colonial Heights values were then set to Age 65+, and were normalized to the Population of 2007. The counties file was turned off because it served no use and the only outline within Virginia that was actually needed at that point was VA tracts. The data from the original first data frame was copied and pasted four times, there was then five data frames in the map; one for each of the four necessary data frames of the individual cities, normalized and not normalized; and one for both Prince George and Colonial Heights together. There were five identical data frames so all unnecessary files were removed for each frame. There were then two Colonial Heights frames, and two Prince George frames, only problem is they were all normalized because they were copies of Data Frame 1. So in one CH data frame and one PG frame the normalized was moved to none under symbology and the value remained at Age of people 65+. Things were then organized in the layout view now that the data frames were complete. A north arrow, scale bars, and legends were added as well. To finalize the map graphs for each individual map were put in. The data of the not normalized was summarized and then the graphs were created. The process for making a graph for normalized maps was a bit more complicated. First you have to go to the summarized data and the percent value was set to the float of Age of 65+ divided by the population of 2007 and multiplied by 100, then the graph was created. The graphs were a visual representation of the maps used.

After some final adjustments to the format of the layout view and all of the data frames, the layout view, and graphs were exported as JPEGS into the documents folder of VA_Demo_CC. Through this project the difference between normalized and not normalized data was displayed. Also the ability to toggle someone’s view of data with the use of normalizing was apparent. The picture on the left is the Normalized map of Prince George and the one on the right is the one that isn’t normalized. As you can see, there is a noticeable difference between the two images. The reason for this must be the areas on the view that isn’t normalized is because not all census blocks are the same size, so the larger ones are usually more densely populated. If there is a large amount of people in an area, there is most likely a large amount of elderly people in that area as well. The exact same thing occurs in the City of Colonial Heights. The normalized version is on the left and the not normalized one is on the right.

What could explain the reason for the patterns noticed??

VERY GOOD WORK…