Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS: A Workbook Approach to Learning GIS, 3rd Edition

Converting the Census Data Spreadsheet to dBASEIV Format

____ 6. Whether or not you were able to download the census data, you can do the conversion to ArcGIS formats in the following steps. Use the computer’s operating system to find the file

dt_dec_2000_sf1_u_data1.xls

in

[___] IGIS-Arc_AUX\DCD\Extracted_Census_Files\output

and copy it to

___IGIS-Arc_YourInitials\Day_Care_Data

____ 7. Still in the computer’s operating system, pounce on the dt_dec_2000_sf1_u_data1.xls file. An Excel spreadsheet should open. If not, start Microsoft Excel and go File > Open and choose

dt_dec_2000_sf1_u_data1.xls

Make the spreadsheet full screen. How many rows (expect thousands) are there in the spreadsheet that contain population data?__ ________. That’s how many census blocks there are in the Knoxville CCD. (A CCD is a Census Collection District. In this case, it is a subset of the Knoxville metropolitan area.) What are the five headings of the spreadsheet columns (row 1)? ____________, ____________, ____________, ____________, ____________.

You are mainly interested in the GEO_ID and the P001001 columns. The Geography Identifier is (a part of) the Block Number. The population column cells indicate the number of people living in the block.

____ 8. Click the A1 cell, to make sure the spreadsheet is selected. Choose: File > Save As. Save it in Day_Care_Data, but use the File name Census1.xls. Now Click Save As again, this time saving with the File name Census2.

Our next steps will ...