Ignite Presenation

Lacrosse by: Marcus Darby - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Gapminder Screencast and Analysis

Variable Set 1 - As Literacy Rate RISES, Life Expectancy RISES
http://screencast.com/t/Cge6tE93qA37



Variable Set 2 - As GDP per capita RISES, Children per women FALLS
http://screencast.com/t/Ab8FzjLnXb3


Part 1
a. 1. Literacy Rate - % of adults who can read and write
    2. Life Expectancy - Number of years a person is expected to live
    3. GDP per capita - Value of all goods and services produces within a country in a given year per person
    4. Children per women - Number of children a mother is expected to have
b. 1. Literacy Rate shows development because if your country has a high number of people that can't read and write your country won't be able to move forward.
    2. Life Expectancy shows development because if your country has a high Life Expectancy, it shows that your country has made medical advances that wouldn't be possible without development.
    3. GDP per capita shows development because the more money the people of a country make the more well off those people will be.
    4. Children per women shows development because when a country starts to develop, it becomes a burden to have more kids so MDCs have less kids.

Part 2
a. b. 1. In Variable Set 1, the trend of African countries being developing is very evident.  Countries like Mali, Chad, and Sierra Leone are way behind the European and North American countries.  Also regions like South Asia and Middle East are also far behind.  There are a few outliers in the data though.  Cape Verde, Mauritius, and the Seychelles are all African countries that have high LE and LR.  But the rest of there African neighbors are having trouble catching up.  But there is hope for these countries.  If they can increase the literacy rate, they will have more educated people which will lead to development down the road.
    2. In Variable Set 2, the same trend of development is there.  Africa and Middle East lag behind while Europe and North America leap forward.  Some countries like the DRC are so far behind in GDP that they earn only about a dollar a day.  This is due to the fact that the former African colonies are still economically dependent on their colonizers.  And then there are exceptions to the Middle East being behind like Qatar, who earns almost 100,000 GDP per capita due to the abundance of oil.

Crossing the Line GIS

View Larger Map

Where is it?
My first country is located in the Arabian Peninsula, in the Middle East, called the Arabian Union.  It will contain present day Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Bahrain.  It is west of Iran and Oman, east of Egypt and Sudan, and north east of Ethiopia.  My second countries are located in Eastern Europe, just north of the Black Sea.  The first new country, West Ukraine, is south east of Poland, and north east of Romania.  The second new country, East Ukraine, is west of Russia, and south east of Belarus.

WHY is it there?
With the first new country, the Arabian Union, have a chance of coming together because the two countries that are joining to Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Bahrain, are both having issues.  Yemen is a very dangerous place right now with a very unstable government.  If they joined to Saudi, they would get the benefit of there economic prosperity, which they are in desperate need of with their failing economy.  Bahrain would be joining not for the economic help, for they are one of the most developed countries in the Middle East.  They would join for protection from the Shiite muslim dominated Iran in the north, who is threatening the safety of Bahrain.  By joining Saudi, they would gain more protection from the Iranians.  For my second new countries, East and West Ukraine, they would be splitting up due to cultural and political differences in the country.  The East Ukrainians speak Russian and want to lean towards Russia.  The West Ukrainians speak Ukrainian and want to lean towards the European Union.  For this reason they will split up.

Why are they THERE?
The boundaries for the Arabian Union are physical.  Although the borders between Yemen ,Oman, and Saudi are undefined, they are mostly separated by the Rub Al Khali desert, which is a physical boundary, plus the water that surrounds the west and north east parts of the country.  The Ukraines are separated by a physical and a cultural boundary.  They are separated by the Russian speakers to the east and Ukrainian speakers to the west.  There is also a river that runs through the middle of Ukraine which splits the two groups of people apart, a physical boundary.

What difference does it make?
The formation of the Arabian Union will change the Arabian Peninsula into a more stable and safe area.  It will make border disputes between Saudi and Yemen non-existent.  The new countries of East and West Ukraine will hopefully stop the disputing and protests that are going on between the two nations, and place a stable government in them.

Cultural Geography Photo Collage

Census Data Mapper Map & Analysis - October 2013

LINK to this map on Google Drive

In my map of people ages 65 or older, there were much more older people in the Midwest and North West.  The map was very dark in areas like Montana,  Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.  Also the northern portion of Michigan, and some areas in Arizona and New Mexico are heavily populated by the elderly. The lighter area of the map was the South, East Coast, and almost all of Alaska.  There is one big area in the West that has very few old people, which is the Western edge of the Rocky Mountains in northern Utah, southwestern Wyoming and western Colorado.

The reason why there are more old than young in certain places is explainable.  There are more young families moving to the Southern portion of the US, and so the percent of old people will go down.  Also some older people don’t want to move from where they were born, and the Northern US was more populated back when these people were born, causing the percent in the North to be much higher.  In Alaska, the terrain and way of life is probably too much for the elderly, so that explains the lack of old people there, and that is probably the case for the Western Rocky Mountains also.  

The effect of having more young people in the South and old people in the North will have a big effect.  It will cause the Southern economy to grow, and the Northern economy to slow down.  It will also make the social security taxes be higher in the North than the South, which will make living in the North more expensive, which will in turn cause the Northern population to go down when the older people start to die.