Exploration of the Local Distribution of Major Ethnic Groups in the USA

Knowledge about the local distribution of major ethnic groups in the USA is an important source of information upon which the success of political and economic decisions may depend. Enhanc- ing this information with additional attributes, such as the specific income or spoken languages, reveals interesting aspects on social constellations as well as their interdependencies. The presented vi- sualization facilitates the intuitive exploration of such multidimen- sional data sets with references to geographical units. Thus, a quick insight into the inherent patterns and characteristic features is pro- vided. Thanks to the high scalability of our visualization technique it can even be used with an iPod-resolution. Once every ten years the U.S. Census Bureau collects data of the people of the United States in a broad demographic survey. Part of the data, the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS 1%), can be used by everyone whenever a reliable basis for political, economic, or social decisions is required. Among others, the dataset contains information about nationalities, ethnicities, and the linguistic and cultural background of the investigated people. The information refers to small geographical units to allow to examine the spatial distribution of the values across the United States. Values for coun- ties, states or even the whole USA can be obtained by aggregating corresponding subunits of the inherent hierarchy. In our project we analyze the spatial distribution of eight major ethnic groups of the United States on different hierarchical levels. Moreover, we enhance the visualization with information about the median income of each group in the corresponding geographical unit and the regionally spoken languages to provide further indica- tors for social constellations and correlations. 2 THE CONCEPT