Q1: What information does the Source tab provide?
The source tab of this particular dataset provides the data file type, where the file is from, the geometry type, also the datum, and Geographic Coordinate System that is being used.
Q2: In what coordinate system is this layer?
This dataset is using the GCS_North_American_1983 coordinate system.
Q3: Compare the different projections. How does the shape of the continental US change with each projection?
Progressively as you go from each projection you can notice a very significant change between the four different projections. The Albers Equal Area Conic projection is the more traditional display that I think people are used to viewing on a computer screen or map. The Mercator projection is slightly larger of a projection which would be used to show projections that need to convey a large land mass in the presentation. The Plate Carree projection is slightly similar to the Mercator, however it is slightly pushed inward, creating a stretched view of the continental United States. The last projection, the Robinson is by far the projection with the most change from the previous three projections. The Roninson looks like it should belong on a round globe sitting on a desk. This projection is slightly swayed to the right and the United States land mass has an almost imaginary pull towards the NE.
Map projections that you can choose from in ArcMap
Q4: How does the position of the cities in relation to each other appear to change between projections?
So in some of the projections the distance between the cities is at a greater distance than other projections. Because every projection from a three dimensional model to a flat two dimensional surface has four different forms of distortion, the position of the cities changes between each of the projections.
Q5: What properties does each projection distort?
On the Albers equal area projection the main area of distortion would be the direction of the United States and its placement on the map. The Plate Carree projection has shape distortion because of its elongated shape on the map. The Robinson projection has a combination of direction and shape distortion. The Mercator projection has both a distance and shape distortion.
Q6: Use the measure tool to measure the planar distance between cities. How does this distance change between projections?
When using the measure tool to measure the planar distance between cities, the projections with the biggest change in distance would be the Albers, and Robinson projections measured against the Plate Carree, and Mercator projections.
Choropleth maps with different classifications
Q7: What variables does this dataset contain?
The variables that this dataset contain are the total number of state parks that reside within a particular state in the United States.
Q8: What classification methods did you use? How does each classification method bias the interpretation of the data?
For these three chorpleth maps I chose three different classification methods to show the results in various manners. These differing methods created a sort of visual bias for the viewer if they did not have any prior knowledge to the variable being visualized. The first map I chose the quantile method which gave an unbiased result, and pretty logical visualized map output. Second I chose the equal interval method which broke the data set up into smaller intervals to show a greater range of visual difference on the map. For the last map I chose the defined interval method which gave the greatest biased visual out of the three maps. This just goes to show you that people can interpret and create maps that sometimes do not show the correct and unbiased visual that should be in place.