Choose Your Own Adventure

Choose Your Own Adventure#

In this exercise, we’re taking off the training wheels! You get to use the GIS skills you’ve learned to answer any question you choose about any place that interests you.

The guidelines for the assignment are that your final deliverable must include one map and one data visualization.

Question#

It is usually best to start your project by deciding on a question you wish to answer. This does not have to be a big “working on my thesis” question, though you’re welcome to use this project to do something related to your academic or professional interests. You may choose to use this as an opportunity to try to see a place you know well (like your hometown) in a new light or from a different perspective.

For example, I grew up in Colorado, and skied constantly during high school. I’ve always heard that the ski slopes are almost never more than 45 degrees, but many of the slopes I skied on always felt much steeper than that. I wonder how steep they actually were? With satellite elevation data, I could answer that question!

Or maybe you want to know about forest fire or flood risk in your home town, or somewhere you’re thinking about moving and buying a home.

Another way to approach this might be to think about a problem you care about. As we’ll discuss after break, data science (in our view) is the study of how to solve problems by answering questions using quantitative methods. So a good way to start is to think about a problem you care about, then think about a question that, if answered, would help you solve that problem.

For example, if the problem I cared about was children developing asthma due to air pollution, a question I might ask is “what type of schools [in durham, in north carolina, etc.] are exposed to the worst air pollution?” Elementary schools? Public schools? etc.

Answering that question would help policymakers target efforts to improve air quality by identifying schools that put kids most at risk.

NOTE: You may not do air pollution unless you can show me it’s already the focus of your research. We’ve done WAY too much air pollution already.

Map#

Your map should include:

  • a raster layer,

  • a vector layer to help orient readers,

  • some labeling of relevant features to further help orient,

  • a legend and clear titles.

So if I were plotting a map of Durham air pollution, for example, I might include a vector polygon with the outline of Durham County over an air pollution raster along with a line-vector layer of freeways.

Data Visualization#

You should also provide a statistical plot generated using your spatial data. For example, if the question I wanted to answer was “what’s the relationship between wealth and exposure to air pollution in Durham?” I might use census data to measure citizen income in Durham and plot the relationship between air pollution and income. Or I could show how the distribution of air pollution varies by type of school.

This should be fun#

The goal here is for you to find something that feels fun or exciting to look into. So choose something you could imagine you’d enjoy showing to your parents/friends/etc.

Contents