11.188 Lab #2 - Feb. 18, 2014

TODAY'S JOIN.ME - 

LAB #2: Mostly more thematic mapping + Windows issues and a bit of Coordinate Systems and Table queries
  (0) Navigating Windows and AFS file system directory trees
      - that is, using network Drives Z; and/or S; or M: and local C:\TEMP
	  - Changing 'workspace' and 'scratchspace' to local C:\TEMP
  (1) Exploratory map - comparing population of Cambridge blockgroups 
      with and without normalizing by block group area,
  (2) Explanatory map - choosing how best to portray a specific spatial relationship 
      between land use and housing prices,
  (3) Comparison of Cambridge land use map in Mass State Plane and 
      Geographic (lat/lon) coordinates
  (4) Creating maps as PDF files
  (5) Getting more comfortable with ArcMap: symbology, legend options, 
      scale bar, north arrow, annotation, ArcGIS help files, ...

Lab #2 presentation:
  -- Review Windows and AFS navigation and network drives in rooms W31-301 and 
     other WinAthena sites
  -- When you save files and documents, AVOID USING SPACES AND SPECIAL
     CHARACTERS (& % ^ ...) IN YOUR NAMES
  -- Using the 'Source' tab in the ArcMap TOC to edit the data locations in saved MSD 
     documents. (How to reset the data source when shapefile locations have changed.) 
  -- Highlight key parts of ArcMap that we will use: 
     layer properties - symbology, labeling, ...; 
  -- Recognize that map annotations use simple graphic tools and 
     are not registered with coordinates that rescale when you alter the map view.
  -- Think about the planning and spatial analysis implications of your 
     mapping.  Who cares about the population distribution across
	 Cambridge?  What measures of density are meaningful for what 
	 purpose? What biases arise because some socio-economic aspects
	 of Cambridge are easy to measure/visualize and other aspects
	 are hard to capture?
  -- Workarounds when shapefiles are big and slow down the machine a lot 
     (for 50 or 100 MB files, turn off some of the features or save a smaller 
	 portion of the shapefile; in our case, just be sure to copy the file 
	 to a local drive.)