Math Counts

Well, I guess it is arithmetic that counts, really.  Either way, most historians don’t, at least not often.  However, I occasionally do–especially when I’m teaching either Urban America or Class and Culture, and I get my students counting, too.  To be a bit more precise I get them analyzing the counting done by other people, chiefly the American Census Bureau through its tool, American Factfinder.  Factfinder is an interactive website which allows users to visually chart a number of demographic characteristics by geographic areas down to the level of zip codes.  The maps created come complete with legends, and show the characteristic broken into quintiles.    The color scheme is standard: the darker the color the higher the concentration.

Creating several maps of the same area allows a student to mark rough correlations between different characteristics.  Here, for example, are three maps maps I created for New Haven, Connecticut, based on the 2000 census.

Showing these without title, students have no trouble noticing there are correlations here.  Ineed to explain the legends a little so they understand what the same colors do and do not signify.

I can then tell them that the first map represents median household income.  I can ask them to speculate what the second represents.  It represents percentage above the age 25 with at least a high school education.

The third?  The percentage who declare themselves white.

Lots of opportunities for discussion with this.  The United States Postal Service provides a quick way to locate zip codes if one wants to run comparisons in a smaller area.  These tools can be combined with another interesting tool, Streetview, which is integrated into Google Maps and Google Earth.

With Streetview, one can visit the neighborhoods investigated through Factfinder and look around.


View Larger Map

Being snoopy by temperament, I have great fun with these tools.  I think my students enjoy them, too.

Mike Swanson