Lab #2

Analyzing School Aged Children in Relation to Schools

Goal

Due to a sudden increase in the youth population of the NYC area, a local school board wants to know where students live in relation to existing schools so that they can make better decisions in the construction of new schools.   You will conduct an analysis for the presentation at a school board meeting with all graphics displayed via a web page.   Also hand in a hard copy write up.

Each student has been assigned a different borough. In the last column of the table on this page , you will see a number. You are only required to do an analysis for your borough.
1 = Staten Island 2 = Bronx 3 = Manhattan 4 = Queens 5 = Brooklyn

Objectives

 

1.         For each census tract, calculate the percentage of the population that are school aged children who live within 0.05 miles of a school and the percentage who live more than 0.05 miles from a school.

 

2.         For all census tracts calculate some statistics (eg, mean, standard deviation, etc.) for the percentage of the school aged population who live within 0.05 miles and more than 0.05 miles from a school.

 

3.         For each census tract, calculate the percentage of the population that are school aged children who live in census tracts that contain schools and the percentage who live in tracts that do not contain schools.

 

4.         For all census tracts calculate some statistics (eg, mean, standard deviation, etc.) for the percentage of the school aged population who live in census tracts with schools and in census tracts without schools.

 

Data

 

This lab’s data included two .shp files called nyctract.shp (NYC census tracts) and sch_ele.shp (schools).

 

 

Methods

 

• Describe the process you used in your analysis.

• Include what assumputions you made.

• Were there limitations (eg, software, data set, etc.) that prevented you from refining your analysis?

• Without these limitations how might you have improved your analysis?

• Discuss your results. Based on your findings can you make any recommendations to the school board on where to place the new schools?

Create a lab2 directory to store all the necessary files (shape files and tables) you will copy from u:/scratch/gtech_gisII_fall02/lab2/. Use the files in your lab2 directory to create a new ArcView project for your analysis.

 

       

Hints:

• Data is projected in UTM coordinates.

• Use ArcView8.2 Help to look up performing spatial analysis, spatial relation type, select by theme.