GIS 6005: Lab 4

 My classification was the basic method of just the population gain or loss from 2010 to 2014. I found this to be a good judge of the movement in these counties. From here you could look into it farther whether for age, diversity, income, etc. Reasons to decide which areas are the hotbeds and which are being deserted. Then to decide the reasons of who and why. I found this to be a good entry level map to begin to interpret these counties from. I chose 5 as usual as I enjoy having two upper and two lower values with a medium value to average it off. I think this allows for a good breakdown and judge of values without offering too little or too much variety. Class breaks were there to break down the zero or below. The first 10. The first 25. The first 50. And then from halfway and above dominated the upper value brackets. This made the most sense and there were very minor movements in some areas which needed to be documented and then in others they had large quantities of population growth which needed to be shown in a way which stood out as the 50 percentile or more. 

For the legend I went with a relatively simple design. It goes from a white to a light blue to a dark blue. For this map I found these made the most sense and looked fairly easy to decipher. This was a basic legend design with a 5 class to have 2 upper and 2 lower values with a medium value to level everything out. The percentages go from negative to near zero. Near zero to near ten. Near ten to near twenty-five. Near twenty-five to near fifty. And finally, near fifty to near seventy-two which was the last percentage rounded too. I found breaking this into these classifications gave a good judge on the growth of these areas by brackets. This gain or loss was based solely on the population change in these counties from 2010 to 2014.