We leave the d3 code here since we will be using this visual library throughout the class this semester.

Sort of the same here, this is another complex library containing all kinds of information that we may need to use. Both of these two libraries have a lot of code.

So, now we want to bring in our own json file (I used Minnesota counties - I also now know that I want to rename my files to make life easier). We drag our file in to be attached and then we can start to type the file name in the cell above to start interacting with it. I made the name of the this file be MNstate using an "=" sign.

Here's where you bring in your demographic data in a csv file. I got cleaned up 2010 census data from the MN government website. I originally brought in my file only to find that some of my values showed as "NaN" which meant that the program couldn't read the values. When I doubled-checked the excel sheet, I noticed that there were commas in the bigger values which made it illegible for the program. Once those were taken out, the file was re-uploaded and everything was smooth sailing from there. So, if you upload your data and it isn't read properly, check to make sure that your values are in the correct format.

This is where we give a name to the data we just brought in and calculated in the previous step. In the previous step, we brought in the data via a csv file. We wanted to see the percent of the population that was Hispanic per county. So, we divided the Hispanic population by the total population and in this step we give that data a more specific name: "hispanicPCT"

aka creating a new variable

First off, before we can start bringing in data, we needed to format it so that observable can read it. For our shapefile, I got geographic data from the MN government website - they have a geo data section on their page. From there I made sure to have at least the shx, shp, prj, and dbf files that go together. Those provide all sorts of data, like: shape, area, what projection it's in, etc. We brought those all into MapShaper and translated into one topojson file (which is the preferred file type on observable).

After initial turn-in: The first time through I forgot to re-project the shapefile - which important to make sure that you are in the correct projection for the topojson. I imported my shapfile into QGIS and re-projected it from NAD83 to WGS84.