Data Analysis Project

My data sets for this project relate to my current home area of Max Meadows, Virginia with the zipcode being 24360. Due to my interest in potentially working in this area after graduation, I thought it would be interesting to examine both educational attainment as well as occupations of the town’s population. The area is pretty small in population compared to where I used to live, so I was curious to see what information I’d come across.

My first two charts examine the educational attainment of two separate age groups. The first bar graph is of the age group 18- 24 and is separated into several sections. It shows how many people have not graduated high school, those who have, whether or not they have some college or an Associate’s degree, and finally those who have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. The second bar graph is of the age group 25 and older and is separated into several slightly different sections. It shows how many people have less than a 9th grade education, those who didn’t finish high school completely, those who did finish high school, those who have some college or no degree, those who have an Associate’s degree, a Bachelor’s degree, and finally those who have a Graduate or Professional degree. All of the information gathered for these bar graphs came from the 2017 American Community Survey conducted specifically for Educational Attainment. The reason why I chose the bar format for both of these graphs is because it was easier to interpret the information as opposed to a pie chart. For the two different groups, one overall pie chart would have made it more confusing. Bar graphs are better for comparisons amongst different categories and shows the trends between the two groups better.

My third chart examines the occupations of those in the town who are 16 and older. With this employed population being 2,871, I was interested to see what the categories were divided up into. For this chart, I specifically chose a pie chart because I wanted to see how the overall employed population was divided up into each of the different employment categories. These categories included Management, Business, Science, and Arts occupations; Computer, Engineering, and Science occupations; Education, Legal, Community Service, Arts, and Media Occupations; Healthcare Practitioner and Technical occupations; Service occupations; Protective Service occupations; Sales and Office occupations; Natural Resources, Construction, and Maintenance occupations; and finally Production, Transportation, and Material Moving occupations. These categories are much more difficult to put into a bar or line graph as it isn’t really comparative- it’s more of an overall picture and aren’t really specifically relating to each other the way the educational attainment bar graphs do. As such, I put them into percentages as opposed to direct numbers. All of the information gathered for this pie graph came from the 2017 American Community Survey for the civilian employed population 16 years and over.

Data Charts:

http://blogs.longwood.edu/phillipsle/files/2018/12/Educational-Attainment.xlsx

http://blogs.longwood.edu/phillipsle/files/2018/12/Occupations.xlsx

Resources:

https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF

https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF

 

Disappearance of School Libraries

Libraries are arguably one of the most important centers to have in a school system, yet across the U.S. they are rapidly disappearing. For some locations, this can either be due to a lack of funding to support them or to pay the librarians that are even hired for the position. For others, there seems to be a sense of a loss of value or purpose for having them. In the wake of modernized technological advances, libraries seem to be pushed to the wayside in importance. Why do we need hard-copy books when technology such as iPads are available in classrooms? Yet what is not seemingly realized is that libraries are not really a waste of space or money. They are actually quite useful. In the libraries I had in both my elementary and middle schools, we learned quite a bit about how to use the internet properly and safely, apply beginner research methods, as well as how to begin to determine accurate information from the inaccurate. Beyond that, the librarians were able to introduce me to different books all of which instilled a love of reading in me that my teachers weren’t fully able to do. This made me more inclined to want to read the things given to me in my classes. From such experiences, I feel that continuing to have libraries in school systems and carving space for their funding is very important. They teach skills beyond just reading and should not really be going anywhere.

https://theconversation.com/the-calamity-of-the-disappearing-school-libraries-44498

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