Racial Populations in Denver, Colorado

Racial Populations in Denver, Colorado, a photo by DakotaDorn on Flickr.

Denver, Colorado is the sight of my newest map.  In this assignment I was to make four identical maps of downtown Denver and keep them at the same scale.  I then added data of different racial populations to each map.  Each map had to have a different color pattern, and the class breaks had to be the same for all of the maps.  This is the part that proved tough while working on this.  The reason is that Asian populations in Denver are very small so finding a class break that worked for all races was tough.  In the end I picked one that showed the other three well, and doesn't show much from the Asian population.  By not showing much though I am saying that there are not many that live there, so the data is still getting shown.  Another area of this map that was challenging was fitting all four maps and there legends in the document.  After changing fonts, adjusting font sizes, and scaling down the sizes of my maps I was able to make it work.

African American Population in the United States

African American Population in the United States, a photo by DakotaDorn on Flickr.

This is a proportional symbol map.  Unlike a graduated symbol map, this one shows exact values and not relative.  ArcGis makes adjusting the size of the minimum and maximum values very easy and even displays the size of each before you change the setting.  There are many adjustments that ArcGis allows you to make on these types of maps, but I am still not to the level where I know everything yet.  With some practice and maybe some light reading I might be able to figure out the vast unknown which is ArcGis. 

U.S. Population between the Ages of 18 and 21

U.S. Population between the Ages of 18 and 21, a photo by DakotaDorn on Flickr.

This was my first ArcGis only map that I have made.  After doing choropleth mapping on Adobe Illustrator and then learning how to do it on ArcGis, it is so much easier!  ArcGis allows you to make a choropleth map in a mere minute or two instead of a couple hours.  Doing a choropleth map of the entire country by county on Illustrator would take a very long time. Another cool feature is the ability to change the class breaks on ArcGis very quickly without having to do any calculations on Excel. The legend on this map was also very easy.  All that needed to be done was click a button and then adjust the settings for your legend and what you wanted displayed.  I didn't really have too much trouble making this map, it was more of just figuring out how to use ArcGis that took time.