Lab 4

In this lab, we learn to use some basic ArcMap™ skills by following the instructions on the ArcMap Tutorial. This tutorial guides us to create a set of maps for a county that is planning to expand its airport, and there are five exercises which each contains different skills of ArcMap. In each exercise, we learn to explore the existing data and working with these information into geographic features or tables. To finish all the exercises, it takes about five to six hours.

While following the instructions on the tutorial, I face some difficulties in Exercise 3 with the population density table. I have tried it several times using the Field Calculator to calculate the population values for each tract in people per square mile. However, I could not get the right values and the information does not even show in the table.  So I start over again from the “Adding data from ArcCatalog,” and later I find out that the reason I cannot get the right value is that I did not close the tract_pop table and TRACT_ID table before proceeding with the join, and the information on the table becomes incorrect from that point. Also, because the tutorial is written for ArcMap version 9.3, and we are using the latest 10.1 version in the computer lab, some of the features are different than explained in the tutorial. Especially the steps with the Editor Toolbar, I am not too sure whether simply skip these steps will affect the outcome of the map or not. But the rest of the tutorial is clear and relatively easy to follow.

As learning to use the AarMap, I find that this is a very useful software of GIS because it can combine many information and data onto one map, and make it easy to read and understand for the readers. In this specific tutorial, by using the ArcMap, we can easily identify whether there is any school that is within the noise contour, or categorize different land use based on different styles portray on the map, and even show population density on a single map. Also, we can use the ArcMap to create graph that shows the number of parcels of each land type. Base on different propose, we can use the ArcMap to reveal these information in different ways to make it easier for the readers to understand.

Although the ArcMap is relatively easy to use and operate and it has great potential to GIS, it sill has some pitfall to GIS. I believe there is much to improve for the software itself. Such as that while I was doing Exercise 3, I did not close both the tract_pop table and TRACT_ID table, so I did not get the right result. However, on the layout it did not show any other window that is left unclosed, and it became hard for me to find which step I did wrong. This is probably an error, and there might be more errors that can lead to significant wrong outcomes. Moreover, after I store my data and map into my flash drive, I cannot successfully reopen it on different computers. The software cannot find the files and data itself; instead, I have to manually search the data.