Cartographic Skills: Week 5 Lab Assignment

In this week's lab assignment, we learned the importance of analyzing spatial data of maps without looking at the map itself and we learned to find the Mean Center and Median Center with spatial data on the map. The methods we used were histograms which allowed us to look at the frequency of the data correlation and QQ Plot graph that represent the data through a scatterplot. A scatterplot looks at the relationship of two attributes that are against each other in the same 2D space. To help us grasp the concepts of this lab, we took a three hour web course on ESRI that allow us to download some datasets and used ArcMap to explore the datasets that were given. 

 

The map that I have create was from the dataset that ESRI had provided for the web course that all of the students took for this lab assignment. This map represents all of the weather monitoring stations throughout Western Europe. The Mean Center and Median Center of the spatial data is shown on this map which located in the center of Central and Western Europe. The Mean Center and Median Center are very close to one another on this map. Also, the faint purple ellipse that is stretching across Central and Western Europe is the Directional Distribution of the spatial data. 

 

To create this map, I used ArcMap to be able to see what information was provided for me from the dataset. The Search bar helped me quite a bit to locate the Mean Center tool and the Median Center tool , both were located in the Spatial Statistic toolbox. These two tools correlated the data of the map to help me find the centers. To create the Directional Distribution ellipse, I went into the Spatial Statistic toolbox, clicked on the Measuring Geographic Distribution toolset and then clicked on the Directional Distribution.