Monday, August 15, 2011

Lab 2: LAUSD Charter Schools vs. Avg. Income


The initial question posed in this assignment was to examine the relationship between LAUSD charter school location and local income. The three primary data sets used was aggregated LAUSD school location, CA zip codes and then average income per zip code. Though complete data was unavailable, the analysis shows that the majority of charter school locations are present in zip codes that have an annual family income of $38,000 or less and are also primarily located in downtown, Crenshaw and South Central.

To complete this analysis geocoding is an important tool that not only allows for efficient visual representation of school location, but is also essential for accurate locations to ensure the schools fall in their correct zip code area. Without a tool that allows for accurate placement of data, there would be significantly less confidence in the resulting analysis. In this example, for additional confirmation, the zip code determined by the geocoding process can be used to confirm that the school is in the correct income area by comparing the location to a separate zip code shapefile. Overall, geocoding, is a key tool that makes this project not only practical, but provides a high level of confidence that resulting comparisons to U.S. census data are valid.

Data:





No comments:

Post a Comment