Week 8 Lab

This map shows the distribution of African Americans in the continental united states. The data used in the map comes from the 2000 census.  It is measured by asking people their race on a questionnaire, which means that this measure is completely based on how people chose to identity themselves. The map is broken down by county, each county is colored based on the percentage of the residents of that county that identified themselves as black on the census. The darkest blue colors represent the places with the highest percentages of blacks and the light yellow represents those places with the lowest percentages.  The maps shows that the areas that have the highest percentages of blacks are all clustered in the south.  Then in the rest of the county the areas with the next highest percentages are mostly on the coasts, and the middle of the county had very low percentages.

In this map we can see the distribution of the Asian population in the United States. It is also based on the data from the 2000 census.  The colors on this map represent the same thing as the map of blacks.  However, the distribution of Asians throughout the country is quite different than that of blacks.  The areas with the highest percentages of Asians are mostly on the West coast.  There are also some scattered areas with higher Asian populations on the east coast.  In comparisons to the map of blacks there are less areas with very low Asian populations than there are with very low black populations.

This map shows the same type of data as the ones above, except for this one shows the percentage of the population that identified themselves as some other race on the census. This category is vague and can mean a number of things, it is all about how people chose to identify themselves. On this map, the areas with the highest percentage of people who identify as some other race are clustered on the west coast and in the southwest. Then the rest of the country has moderate to low levels of people identifying as some other race.  

This data is very informative and interesting.  However, it is important to keep in mind the way that is has certain limitations.  Although the census data is good it is not perfect, it can never count every single person, so we always need to consider the fact that there is some margin for error.  An additional factor to remember is that all of the data is based on how people self identify, so people who may be considered the same race by others may consider themselves something else on the census.  These maps give a good visual representation of the distribution of people of various races thought out the continental United States.