Throughout the process of this assignment, I struggled greatly in completing everything that was necessary. At the beginning of the assignment, I did not struggle much with the set up. I chose the consensus data from the 1820’s to show in the map I created. Once I had those files downloaded, I uploaded them to mapshaper with ease. Once I had read through the next step, I began to try to insert the data that I needed and merge it with other data. For some reason I struggled to get this completed and could not do it for a long time. After doing some research online and talking to classmates, I figured out how to merge everything correctly to make it look good. I still worried I had missed something or not included a certain set of data. I feel as though this assignment took a set of extra skills that I really needed to work on to be successful at. The label of my map was created to make it obvious that the map showed county population. Further in, I struggled to figure out how to choose a value for my map, but I eventually figured it out and chose Nonwhite, slave, Male. This means that the final product of my map shows the nonwhite male slave ratio in counties around the country. I still felt as though my map looked boring. So, I decided to add some bright colors that would give the map a pop when someone looks at it. These colors also help to clearly show a distinction between high and low populations.
Through this experience of creating the map, I feel that I learned a lot about data and using it for historical purposes. This took a lot of effort, but in the end once I completed it I felt really good about myself.