Mapping project assignment

Your assignment is to use geographic data to write a news story.

Self-select yourselves into groups of three. You must have both grads/undergrads on your team. Write your teams in here by Saturday, March 2nd:

Overview: Use Census or other approved data to analyze a trend, create an online interactive and write a story that includes sources that exemplify or explain the trend. Think of the story as the goal, the interactive as complementary material, and the analysis as a means to get to both.

Some requirements and deadlines:

• Use Census bureau or other pre-approved data.
• Budget lines are due by midnight, Saturday, March 2nd. This is a pitch of your story. Include a link or explanation of your data.
• You can use either QGIS or Google Fusion tables to do analysis on your data, but in the end you’ll need the Fusion Table map. The map should:
• Use map styles to visually show readers the trend you are writing about
• Have a well-formatted info window that shows the details about your trend.
• Include a legend so readers can understand the map
• Properly source the information.
• Your blog post should be constructed as a proper news story, and include at least two sources that exemplify or explain the trend you are tracking.
• This post is due the beginning of class on March 19th.
• Your team will spend a couple of minutes showing your map and talking about your story during class on March 19th.

You can divide the work of the project in any way you see fit. You will provide a grade and brief explanation of effort for yourself and each teammate (by survey), which will be considered in project grading.

UPDATE: I attached a couple of handouts with common Excel formulas. And some crazy Excel formulas.

Categories: Assignments, Spring 2013