Wednesday, May 1, 2013

GIS 3015 Final


The map I'm presenting shows two different data sets concerning the 2009 SAT. The first data set is the mean score of the 3 part test by state. The second data set is the percentage of students that took the test. Because the 2 data sets have a very obvious inverse relationship, I chose to display the mean score data using a choropleth map. The mean scores of the SAT are displayed by graduated symbols on top of the choropleth map.

The results of the map show an inverse relationship between the percentage of students that take the SAT to the mean score by state. The lower the percentage of students taking the test, the higher the average. The higher the percentage of students taking the test, the lower the average. All of the states falling in the lowest percentile group of tests taken (3% - 11 %) fall in the 2 categories with the highest averages. Maine has the highest percentage of students that took the test, 90%, but the average score is only 1377. On the other end, Iowa, tied with North Dakota and South Dakota for the lowest percentage of test taken, has the highest ranking average.

The trend in geographic locations of this inverse relationship is also very defined. The Northeast US dominates in percentage of students who took the test, having all of the states with the highest percentage category (71.1% - 90.0). While all of the Midwest US has the lowest percentage of students taking the test with the highest average.

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