Goal

Suppose you are asked to analyze data from the American Community Survey (ACS) (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs). This yearly survey provides the most up-to-date information on the detailed socioeconomic status of the US, including population, housing, income, and poverty. You will create population and poverty maps with different map types (e.g., dot density and choropleth) and data classification methods (e.g., Equal Interval, Quantile, and Natural Break). It would also be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate your critical thinking in mapping by analyzing how the population and poverty patterns could be presented differently due to the cartographer’s choice of mapping.

The lab dataset sources

The text format (not the GIS database!) of American Community Survey data is available on the US Census Bureau website (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs). For the lab, demographics and poverty data are extracted from the website and joined to the US 2020 Census county shapefile (https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-geodatabase-file.html) by Yuri Kim.