Three Maps of Los Angeles County

Over this summer I interned at a non-profit activist organization based in Los Angeles, my job was mostly making thematic maps. HealthyCity.org is a good resource if you want to quickly find various data for the state of California, but it often does not provide detailed enough information (you can see a huge difference between the drop-outs map and the other two maps which are based on census tract data).

Maps are a great way to display a huge array of data in a clear and comprehensive way to tell a story. So I took a couple minutes to make an example of one of these stories with three maps:

The first map shows drop out rates in Los Angeles County:

Map 1

The second map shows people living in poverty in Los Angeles County:

Map 2

The third map shows where the white population of Los Angeles lives (I chose to do it this way rather than making 3-4 different maps showing where different racial minorities live, but you are welcome to go to the site and play around with that yourself):

Map 3

Basically, these three maps illustrate a correlation between school drop-outs, people in poverty, and people of color. The interpretation of these three maps can differ vastly. They can lead to a condemnation of the "culture of poverty" or to a criticism of the "achievement gap" between classes and races.