Week 4 – Hollinger

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 was pretty straightforward. I didn’t have any problems with it, but it did help me make connections to some of the topics we learned about in the Mitchell book. Some of the topics I remembered from the Mitchell book were vectors, rasters, and attributes.

It was neat seeing how the layers could be turned on and off so that not everything was visible at once when trying to work on the map. One thing I did run into was on step 12 of exploring the map, I did not see an Enable Outline button, but I just skipped past it after looking for a while and it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. I also thought it was really neat how you could filter the data really easily so the map only showed certain types of incidents. 

My favorite feature of this chapter was probably the popup windows. As a data major, I feel like we often just look at big data sets without much context. This however took parts of the data and gave them geographical context that you could visualize, which was super interesting to look at. This helped me understand how maps could be used to categorize crimes and how that data can be applied to high-crime areas to make them safer.  

Here is a map of my work for chapter one:

Chapter 2

Exercise 2A: Exercise 2A was again pretty easy and straightforward to me. It did take a second to find all of the buttons since I wasn’t familiar with the software at all. I did get a little confused finding the ESRI Press folder but it turns out I just missed the part where you had to download it at the front of the book. Importing the map and making the folder connection was pretty simple. It was also interesting to see the difference in how the popups looked in ArcPro vs. Online. Ultimately, this section didn’t have you change much, but really just look around and learn how to use the tools like explore and select. 

Exercise 2B: I liked how you got to play around more with the data and symbology in this section more than in Chapter 1. The option to edit and change the size of the symbols and the visibility range so you couldn’t see labels until a certain extent was really neat because it helped make the map less cluttered. I also recognized the use of graduated symbols from the Mitchell book. I could also see how measuring the distance between features could be really useful. I don’t remember base maps being mentioned in the Mitchell book, but I could have just missed it. I thought the different types of base maps could be beneficial. Streets might be more useful in city areas, while oceans are more useful when looking at a larger view of the world. 

Exercise 2C: Exercise 2C and I did not get along. There was a problem, which I think was with the folder connection and path where I couldn’t save my project in the 3D folder and because of that couldn’t access the files in that folder to do the activity. So, I ended up having to skip this activity. 

Here is my picture from Chapter 2 A and B:

Chapter 3

Exercise 3A: A new function I learned about was Attribute Query: a request for features in a table that meet user-defined criteria. This was really useful for selecting and narrowing down your map to only a certain area (Illinois in this case) from a broader region. I could see this being used to focus on only specific counties in a state, or maybe even certain areas in a park or preserve. 

Exercise 3B: This section also applied concepts of symbology discussed in the Mitchell book, like graduated colors. I also thought it was interesting to see the classification method of natural jenks from the Mitchell book on an active map and how drastically changing the values of classes can change the map. The importing layer symbology process got a little repetitive after doing it 6 times, but it wasn’t a super complicated process. After that, I only ran into 1 problem here, which was that apparently the appearance tab is actually called the feature layer tab so it took me a while to find the swipe tool. 

Exercise 3C: After I created the new map, and tried to add a new Perc_change field to the attribute table, I ran into a problem where it wouldn’t load, but eventually it did the next day although it wasn’t in the place it said it would be in the book. Calculating the field value was really easy. I expected it to be more complicated than filling in a few boxes. The analysis and summary statistics were the same way. I did like the graphic infographic produced. It was a different but still visually appealing way to see the data. Although you did lose some of the geographic contexts when looking just at the infographic. 

Exercise 3D: I did not run into any problems with this section. It was short and to the point. I liked the visual application of food deserts. That was one of the applications I wrote about in my week 1 post so it was interesting to get to work with it myself. The process for spacially joining data was again surprisingly simple and I did not expect it to be just a few quick drop-down boxes. The way that this allows the number of food deserts to be shown in each county was really useful. I could see how it could be used in situations where maybe there are too many features to be displayed in one area so instead of overcrowding the number could just be displayed. It makes it easier to see the number of features without having to count them. 

Here’s a screenshot of my final Chapter 3 map:

Chapter 4 

Exercise 4A: I also didn’t run into any problems with this exercise. I thought the process of building a geodatabase wasn’t too complicated. I had a little trouble finding the tools at first, but once I figured out how to search for them it was simple. Changing the symbology was again pretty straightforward. I liked the use of different symbols to showcase the difference between wells and fire hydrants etc. I could see how this would be applied to making different features distinct from each other in different contexts. I understood mapping the attribute values with points x and y and the attribute domains. Attribute domain: a set of valid values, or a numerical ranger, to which attributes in each field must be limited. I think this would be useful when you have to establish differences between similar attributes. 

Exercise 4B: I had a problem with finding the bookmark in Exercise 4B. When I looked on the bookmark tab it just said “No bookmarks.” Ultimately, I just ended up zooming in and finding the area that needed to be edited. Using the select tool to edit the pipe was pretty simple. Entering the attribute value was straightforward as well. This would be useful to describe a feature, especially if you took it off the map the information of location could still be provided in the data set. 

Exercise 4C: Merging the polygons and choosing the attributes to preserve were again simple popups through the edit tool. It was similar to selecting the pipeline in exercise 4B. However, I ran into the bookmark issue again when it came to the move bookmark. I ended up just finding the spot and selecting it again. I thought it was nice how you can move vertexes instead of having to delete and replace the whole feature. This makes for faster editing which I feel will be useful when working on larger projects. Drawing the polygon in adding map notes was also similar and it reminded me of the process similar to adding the pipeline in 2B.  

Here are my images for Chapter 4:

Chapter 5

Exercise 5A: This exercise was in building and executing tasks. Having the preset tasks made doing things like the definition queries really simple. I understood how this was useful to save time and prevent errors. However, what I did not understand was whether these tasks are made by the user to be executed by the same user or someone else. I feel like it would not make sense to make a task for yourself to do instead of just doing it. 

Exercise 5B: This exercise brought back the definition queries to limit the extent of the data to certain areas like countries and again used graduated symbols. These two concepts are easy for me at this point. Then we had to use a model builder. I understood how to build the model, but I didn’t really understand what it was for until the model ran. I feel like the book could have been clearer on that. It also talked about how you could make certain processes so they took parameters and change the values over and over again. I think this would be useful if you needed to do the same process with different values in the data. 

Exercise 5C: Again no issue on this exercise. I thought seeing the python command was really interesting as it is more similar to the code I am used to seeing in my computer science classes than doing processing through drop-downs and functions in GIS. I definitely prefer the dropdowns more. It makes the process a lot more simple. Seeing the code and how it is used in different or custom geoprocessing tools was very interesting and I feel like it can make the software flexible to do things outside of the limits of the buttons you find on the screen.

My chapter 5 pictures: