{"id":7564,"date":"2026-09-25T11:27:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T16:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/?p=7564"},"modified":"2026-09-25T11:27:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T16:27:55","slug":"sisler-week-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/2026\/09\/25\/sisler-week-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Sisler Week 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter 4:<\/span><\/p>\n

The first tutorial for this chapter focused on importing data into your project. This taught me how to import data from external sources, such as the free websites mentioned in the book. When importing data, you have to know how it’s stored; if it is a Microsoft Excel workbook, it needs to be saved as a .csv file to properly import it. Using the GIS software, you can create your own databases. The second tutorial was about modifying the attribute table; this helps you display what you want to the user more easily. From this tutorial, I learned how to join tables together to display wanted information. When joining tables, if you don\u2019t export the data table, then the change won\u2019t be permanent. The third tutorial was about linking tabular data to the spatial feature classes. This allows the map to have symbols based on the values found in the data. There are different types of attribute queries. The different types are what and when; for example, what type of crime and the date it happened on. The second type is a refinement of when; this would be weekday vs. weekend or morning vs. afternoon. The third attribute query would be who or what; who did the crime or what was the crime are examples of this. The third tutorial really solidified how to do each type of attribute query. The fourth tutorial was counting the burglaries by neighborhood. The fifth tutorial was creating a central point for each area\/polygon. The last tutorial in chapter 4 taught me how to make a table for many things; this helps a user understand what the numbers mean and how to interpret the data.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Chapter 5:<\/span><\/p>\n

Location is very important; when working with data, it is important to know the latitude and longitude coordinates corresponding to the precise location. These coordinates can tell us whether or not something is by a river, in a certain area, or even reachable. This chapter focused on spatial data. The first tutorial in this chapter taught me how to change the coordinate system for the map that you are creating. The second tutorial taught me to work with projected coordinate systems. The third tutorial followed the second with more projected coordinate systems. This one had me add a new layer to set a map’s coordinate system. I was able to change the map’s coordinate system for a specific layer in the data. The fourth tutorial reviews file formats that are commonly found with vector spatial data. The tutorial also covers how to import a shapefile, which is a different format that spatial data suppliers use because it’s simple. A shapefile consists of at least three files, which include .shp, .dbf, and .shx. The tutorial taught me how to import and change the coordinates because the imported data might not match the coordinate system of the map. The fifth tutorial was about working with US census map layers and data tables. A good website to get data would be the Census Bureau’s website. I downloaded the TIGER and tabular data, then refined it to be more useful. From this refined data, I followed the tutorial to create a choropleth map. The last tutorial for this chapter was about extracting raster features for a specific county. I did find this tutorial a little difficult to follow compared to the other ones.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Chapter 6:<\/span><\/p>\n

Geoprocessing is a framework and set of tools for processing geographic data; these tools are used to build areas of study and perform tasks. This chapter taught me how to extract a subset of spatial features from a map using spatial queries. The first tutorial was about dissolving features to create neighborhoods. The tool we used in this tutorial was the pairwise dissolve tool. This tool takes data, a dissolve field, fields, and statistic type to dissolve block groups to create neighborhoods. The second tutorial was about extracting and clipping features of an area to study them. The tool used in this tutorial was Clip; this tool clips streets to study the area. The third tutorial taught me how to merge two or more layers into a single layer. The tool used in this tutorial was the merge tool; it was used to create a single water feature from 5 different water features. The fourth tutorial taught me how to use the append tool, which added features to an existing feature class. The fifth tutorial used the pairwise intersect tool, this tool creates a feature class combining all the features and attributes of two inputs feature classes. The sixth tutorial taught me how to use the union tool. The union tool overlays the geometry and attributes of two inputs to create a new layer. The tutorial also taught me how to calculate geometry attributes. This allowed me to look at the acreage of the polygons. The last tutorial used the tools intersect and union. The tutorial was about the tools to create a feature class with combined features and data. When using these tools, the data is not split into parts for the new features. One of the tools I used was the Tabulate Intersection tool, which estimated the number of features within the boundary.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\" \"\" \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter 4: The first tutorial for this chapter focused on importing data into your project. This taught me how to import data from external sources, such as the free websites mentioned in the book. When importing data, you have to know how it’s stored; if it is a Microsoft Excel workbook, it needs to be saved as a .csv file to properly import it. Using the GIS software, you can create your own databases. The second tutorial was about modifying the attribute table; this helps you display what you want to the user more easily. From this tutorial, I learned how to join tables together to display wanted information. When joining tables, if you don\u2019t export the data table, then the change won\u2019t be permanent. The third tutorial was about linking tabular data to the spatial feature classes. This allows the map to have symbols based on the values found in the data. There are different types of attribute queries. The different types are what and when; for example, what type of crime and the date it happened on. The second type is a refinement of when; this would be weekday vs. weekend or morning vs. afternoon. The third attribute query would be who or what; who did the crime or what was the crime are examples of this. The third tutorial really solidified how to do each type of attribute query. The fourth tutorial was counting the burglaries by neighborhood. The fifth tutorial was creating a central point for each area\/polygon. The last tutorial in chapter 4 taught me how to make a table for many things; this helps a user understand what the numbers mean and how to interpret the data.\u00a0 Chapter 5: Location is very important; when working with data, it is important to know the latitude and longitude coordinates corresponding to the precise location. These coordinates can tell us whether or not something is by a river, in a certain area, or even reachable. This chapter focused on spatial data. The first tutorial in this chapter taught me how to change the coordinate system for the map that you are creating. The second tutorial taught me to work with projected coordinate systems. The third tutorial followed the second with more projected coordinate systems. This one had me add a new layer to set a map’s coordinate system. I was able to change the map’s coordinate system for a specific layer in the data. The fourth tutorial reviews file formats that are commonly found with vector spatial data. The tutorial also covers how to import a shapefile, which is a different format that spatial data suppliers use because it’s simple. A shapefile consists of at least three files, which include .shp, .dbf, and .shx. The tutorial taught me how to import and change the coordinates because the imported data might not match the coordinate system of the map. The fifth tutorial was about working with US census map layers and data tables. A good website to get data would be the Census Bureau’s website. I downloaded the TIGER and tabular data, then refined it to be more useful. From this refined data, I followed the tutorial to create a choropleth map. The last tutorial for this chapter was about extracting raster features for a specific county. I did find this tutorial a little difficult to follow compared to the other ones.\u00a0 Chapter 6: Geoprocessing is a framework and set of tools for processing geographic data; these tools are used to build areas of study and perform tasks. This chapter taught me how to extract a subset of spatial features from a map using spatial queries. The first tutorial was about dissolving features to create neighborhoods. The tool we used in this tutorial was the pairwise dissolve tool. This tool takes data, a dissolve field, fields, and statistic type to dissolve block groups to create neighborhoods. The second tutorial was about extracting and clipping features of an area to study them. The tool used in this tutorial was Clip; this tool clips streets to study the area. The third tutorial taught me how to merge two or more layers into a single layer. The tool used in this tutorial was the merge tool; it was used to create a single water feature from 5 different water features. The fourth tutorial taught me how to use the append tool, which added features to an existing feature class. The fifth tutorial used the pairwise intersect tool, this tool creates a feature class combining all the features and attributes of two inputs feature classes. The sixth tutorial taught me how to use the union tool. The union tool overlays the geometry and attributes of two inputs to create a new layer. The tutorial also taught me how to calculate geometry attributes. This allowed me to look at the acreage of the polygons. The last tutorial used the tools intersect and union. The tutorial was about the tools to create a feature class with combined features and data. When using these tools, the data is not split into parts for the new features. One of the tools I used was the Tabulate Intersection tool, which estimated the number of features within the boundary.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2415,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-student-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2415"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7572,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564\/revisions\/7572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}