Lab 1

Goal and Background:

The goal of the first lab of GIS II is to review content and information from GIS I, such as symbology within cartographic design, understanding attribute tables, and normalizing data.

Methods:

This lab requries students to follow specific lab instructions and follow up by answering eight questions provided by the instructor that correspond to the lab exercise.

Question 1  "What are the Geographic Coordinate System(GCS), Projected Coordinate System(PCS), and projection of the ‘street’ shapefile in the ‘Lab1Data’ folder?"

To answer this, I opened the properties of the 'streets' shapefile and looked under the source tab to find all three answers.

2.  In your own words, describe what ArcCatalog is. What are the advantages of using ArcCatalog instead of Windows Explorer?

To answer this, I looked up the details of Arc Catalog and its advantages using the ESRI website, and then put the answer into my own words.  

3.  What is the difference between ArcMap and ArcCatalog?

Again, using the ESRI website, I looked up specific differences between ArcMap and ArcCatalog and answered accordingly.  

4.  What attributes are associated with the Donut Shops layer? Describe each attribute.

For this one, I opened the attribute table and listed and explained all the following attributes: FID, Shape, Name, Address, and Phone Number.  

5.  What are the street names of the 'Major Highways' crossing the Redlands map?

To find the answer to number 5, I opened up the attribute table for 'streets' and selected all 'Major Highways' using the "select by attributes tool," and was able to then determine the common name for all Major Highways in the Redlands map.  

6.  Which of the associated layers has the largest number of records in its attribute table? How many?

For number 6, I simply opened all the attribute tables of the provided shapefiles and determined that 'streets' had the most records, at 3,220.  

7.  Choose two variables (Persons and one other EXCLUDING PC_Income) for Erie County. Create symbologies for these variables which appropriately show their distribution and label them. Be sure to consider proper normalization.

Map 1 - Eerie County Population Density (persons per tract)

Map 2 - Eerie County Households per Tract

Above are the two maps I decided to make with the variables 'persons per tract,' and 'households per tract.'