Category: Exercise 7 maps

Racial Data for Greater Hartford School Districts 2009-2010

My intentions were to show stark racial division between Greater Hartford area school districts in 2009-2010 with the map above. To accomplish this I manipulated the data and selected colors that would evoke imagery. I chose to create data visualization for the percentage of white people in a district, instead of the percentage of people of color. I divided the data in increments of four. I used colors that more closely resembled human skin tones to help people perceive certain areas as being “white” and others as “brown”.

Diversity Data for Greater Hartford School Districts 2009-2010

On this map, my goal was to show the Greater Hartford area as diverse. The perceived diversity of this map was achieved by using multiple shades of the same color. I used the percentage of people of color for this map. I divided the data set in 5 to allow for the usage of more colors. For both maps, I altered the information window to show the data that would support my goal of demonstrating diversity or segregation.

2009-10 Hartford Area School District Racial Diversity

2009-10 Hartford Area School District Racial Division

Both maps illustrate the percentage of minority students in the Hartford area school district in the year 2009-10 . Although they seem to display different information, they are the same thing. In the first map, that shows racial diversity, there are multiple buckets therefor there is a greater range of data. In Google fusion the option of increasing or decreasing the buckets can be used to emphasize segregation or desegregation in maps. In the second map which shows racial division I just decreased the amount of buckets which provides less data, therefor it seems like the majority of the schools have a small minority population.

Map 1: This map shows sharp racial divisions in the outlined towns of Connecticut.

Map 2: This map shows a more widespread racial diversity throughout the selected towns of Connecticut.

The two maps shown above are both interpretations of the same data, the percentage of minority students in the given towns of Connecticut in 2009-10. The maps look very different, however, because I have altered some of the percentage settings. Map 1 shows that the percentage of diversity is either heavily swayed one way or the other, that a town either has a very low percentage of minority students or a very high percentage of minority students (no in-between). This is due to there only being two options of shaded regions in the legend on the bottom right hand corner of the map. I purposely altered these percentages to only show 5-52.5% for the lightly shaded region, and 52.5-100% in the darker shaded region. These alterations made the map look significantly different than Map 2. The reason Map 2 shows much more racial diversity in the selected towns is because I allowed for there to be more of a variety of shaded regions in the legend on the bottom right hand corner of this map. In adding these “buckets” I was able to decrease the gap in between the percentages for each shaded region (i.e. leaving 10% of a gap for each “bucket” as opposed to nearly 50%). By decreasing the gap percentage for each shaded region the map allows one to interpret the data differently than Map 1 and shows more racial diversity, although both maps illustrate the same data.

Racial Diversity in the Hartford Area (2009-2010)

Racial Segregation in the Hartford Area (2009-2010)

Explanation:

The first map, which includes a variety of rainbow-colored districts, presents Hartford and its surrounding suburbs as racially diverse. This image of racial diversity was achieved by increasing the number of buckets used to divide the data,  readjusting each bucket’s data range, and selecting a rainbow color theme. Using eight different buckets implies that the entire set of data is diverse and is better understood when broken down into smaller parts. Also, because each individual bucket represents a different range of data – the red bucket covers a 0.3 range while the magenta bucket covers a 0.19 range – I was able to make it appear as though only a few suburbs are extremely segregated. Finally, the rainbow color theme, as opposed to a gradient theme, makes it more difficult to compare levels of racial segregation without directly consulting the legend. The second map, which presents Hartford as racially segregated, displays the data using only two buckets and two colors in order to imply stark racial differences between Hartford and the surrounding suburbs. By oversimplifying the data into two ranges – 0 to 0.5 and 0.5 to 1.0 – it appears as though the majority of white citizens and minority citizens are sharply divided.