Section 6  Disaggregating Data. What has been Gained?

It is worth a moment to stop and consider what has been gained by this effort. Take a moment to compare Map 1 and Map 5. In our first View, we had two files with the cryptic filenames Cty06089.shp and Pla06089.shp. What were the actual features represented by these polygons? In contrast, the labels Shasta County and Important Cities immediately identify the features represented by the polygons in each Theme. In addition, we discovered that the Pla06089.shp Theme contained hidden data. By disaggregating this data and renaming polygons, we created a much more informative map. Instead of a map containing to two unidentified blobs, we created a map of the important Cities in Shasta County, California. Much of the Census TIGER data available from ESRI is aggregated. To make this data much more useful to you, you can apply the techniques that you have learned in this tutorial. If you want to check your mastery of these techniques, continue to the next section.

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