Day 5, Mat115H

• Announcements:
  • Roll
  • Your first assignment will be returned on Friday: I'm still awaiting homework from two people.

    "Define a metric to measure a cereal's 'goodness'. One or two pages, typed, including instruction on how to use a nutrition label (and box, and anything else) to decide."

    As a general rule, late homeworks will be penalized -- but better late than never.

• NKU interventions. I've created the following teams
  • Psychology and the hope metric (see Prof. Rachel Clark) -- Kara (and Kensey and Robin)
  • Public art and Little Free Libraries -- Melody and Grace
  • Income inequality -- Marisa and Alli
  • Photography -- Betsy and Cassidy
  • History -- Emily and Sandra
  As a team, you need to
  1. Contact Mark Neikirk, to get the contact info for your project;
  2. Contact the person in charge. Find out:
     1. What did they do (or what are they doing): describe successes and failures
     2. What impact will/did their intervention have/had on 505?
     3. What can we learn from their project?
     4. What advice might they give us as we set off on our own project?

  3. Write a two-page report (a group report). This should be very well-written.
  4. You will present your discoveries in class on Friday, 9/4. Each of your groups will have 8 minutes for your presentation. This should be a formal presentation, as though you're presenting in a board room, in a public meeting, etc.

• I've reserved the computer lab today, because I want us to visit a couple of sites, and begin "getting our hands dirty":

  So we'll postpone further discussion of some of the mathematical, statistical, and graphical issues until Friday.

  • Census Explorer
    is useful for mapping, and learning about some elementary census variables in the neighborhood, for several different periods.

    Type "Newport, KY" in the box with "Enter address or geography" in it.

    This is your mission for today:

    • Determine the Census tracts that adjoin (touch) Census tract 505.
    • Compare the different census tracts on several different measures, for one point in time.
    • Compare the different census tracts on one measure, for three points in time.
    • What are your initial impressions?
    You will type up the results of your mission (to hand in on Friday).

  • If you finish with the assignment above, then you might click on the "Data" button in Census Explorer. You'll get to Census community facts (from FactFinder)

    You can even download data on the Census Tracts of Newport, KY from this site.

Some Links:

• A cool tool to allow you to visualize the neighborhood on several census variables by census tract.
  Here's what may be a commercial version of the same thing? It's got a little more resolution. I'm checking with our library to see if we can have the professional access.
• Tract 505 ACS 2006-2010 census Profiles
• Map showing Census Tract 505
• Google Earth map of the tracts of Kentucky (505 is number 27302)
• What's the Matter With Eastern Kentucky?