• Lab #7 (GPS field work): due Monday, April 23
• Homework #3: Raster Analysis and ModelBuilder
  
  • Part 1 (raster) due today, Wed., April 18
  • Part 2 (discussion and model builder) due next Wed.. April 25
• Project proposals:
• See feedback on Stellar
• Talk to us today or Friday (3-5 in 9-255)
• We will move to 9-255 today after ~30 minutes
• No new lab exercises or homework beyond lab #7 and Hwk #3
•  focus on individual project work
• especially, do you have appropriate data for useful spatial analysis
  
  

Today

• Start in City Arena and MOVE TO 5TH FLOOR LAB after half hour...
• Project presentation tips (using Cherrie Abbanat's slides)
• Progress on projects

Homework #3 raster bug 

• Project ideas: 
• Most of you are reasonably settled on a project topic
• What about project scope and expectations
• In-lab test is an (abbreviated) example of a possible project
• For example: consider this year's look at voting patterns in the 2016 election
• What geographic and socio-economic characteristics explain county-level differences in results
• How has this changed over a few elections
• Another example: examining municipality budgets in greater Boston area
• Comparing equalized assessed value per capita and various town revenues and expenditures
• Examining spatial pattern within metro areas with particular attention to location of infrastructure; population demographics, community type, etc.
• In general
• Project would require a little more digging regarding reasoning, literature, evidence, and spatial analysis
• Project could provide context and first step in a longer study you anticipate in future semesters

File organization and performance issues for project work

• C:\temp is local, while desktop and I:\ are not
• Set LOCAL locations in the environment for workspace and (especially) scratch space
• Redundancy can be good!
  • Read-only copy of originals (e.g., test18data)
  • Local working copies
    • proj18_working folder that you move from network to C:\temp and back
    • Many MXDs: 11.188_proj_v1.mxd, _v2, _v3, ...
    • Use Access (personal geodatabase): 11.188_proj_working.mdb to store datasets (BUT, create it via ArcCatalog as a personal geodatabase so it has geospatial tables that ESRI wants before it lets you save new data into it)
      
  • Use multiple windows (especially on machines with big screens)
  • Use Data Frames with different joins, coordinates, etc.
  • Open multiple ArcMap sessions along with Access and Excel and a text editor
    • Just keep the file versions straight
    • And you may need to close files if locked by another application
• Refresh issues in ArcMap
  • Sometimes, removing a table and then editing and adding a new version of it will add the old version (from cache)
    • Save ArcMap document, exit ArcMap, and restart - then add table
    • This happens if you edit the table outside ArcMap and do not change the name
  • When ArcMap is slow to redraw maps
    
  • If the mapped layer has joins to large tables, then redraw may slow down
  • You can always export the joined layer as a new shapefile and add it back for much faster performance
  • You can copy the symbology from one layer onto another layer
    

Project Presentation Tips

• Cherrie Abbanat's powerpoint slides
  • Tips on technical presentations and writeups
  • Group discussion about project and CI requirement
• Help from the GIS Services group in the MIT Libraries
  • http://libraries.mit.edu/gis/
  • send email to gishelp@mit.edu as well as 11.520staff@mit.edu
• Next few class sessions
  • Work individually on project
  • Discuss project focus and data issues with us