Census 2000 Population Patterns in The U.S.

About the maps: The purpose of these three maps is to represent the percentage population of three different races as described by the U.S. Census 2000. Each maps show the trends of Whites, African American and Asian population (respectively) by county. In doing this maps series, I used the North America Lambert Conformal Conic Projection, which preserves angular relations and which shows less distortion for the Continental United States. Also, since I am working with percentages, I used the Natural Breaks (Jenks) classification method, using 5 classes to find groupings and patterns in the data and reducing the number of decimals to one for better clarity. Furthermore, I used the graduated colors symbology to better represent and differentiate the patterns of these populations by percentage.

What does the map describe? With the graduated colors we can clearly see a definite pattern for each race alone. For example, we noticed that the vast majority of White people (90.1-99.7%). represented by the darker green color, live mainly towards the northern parts of the country, with even more emphasis on the north central and north-eastern counties of the U.S. . On the other hand, we can see that the majority of the African American population represented in dark purple (43.4-86.5%) is concentrated in the south-eastern counties of the United States, in states such as Missouri, Georgia and Alabama. Then, we see a trend of migration (5.5-16.3%) towards the northern counties and towards the west (mainly in Southern California). Last but not least, there was a clear pattern for the Asian Population which is more predominant (14-30.8%) towards the western states, as seen in dark brown in California and Washington or in the East Coast's counties, which reminds us of a clear immigration patterns towards New York in the beginning of the 20th century and California in the later years.

Note: Regarding the data, there was some "null data" in some of the central states, which could mean that a very little or zero percent of the population didn't declare themselves as "blacks" or Asians on the 2000 Census.