Final Proposal

Title: Slave Sales

Description: The information that my data set includes are what state each slave resides in. There are a number of different states that are included in the census that tells the person viewing the census which particular state each slave is from. In addition to the states that the slaves live in, the county that they live in is also included. There are several different counties per state that are located in the census. Each slaves date of entry is part of the information provided to us. The sex of each slave is included since it is deemed important for obvious reasons. How many years old is each slave as well as how many months they are as far as the infants are concerned. The price of each slave is also part of the census. Each slave has an appraisal number attached to them stating how much they are essentially “worth”. Any skill or skills that the slaves have assuming they have any at all are included as well as any possible defects that any slave may have. The data involves a combination of numerical values as well as text and geographic. On the numerical side, the age, value, as well as the entry date are included. This numeric values have a wider range than its geographic counterpart. As far as the geographic side each slaves state, as well as county is included in the census. The text that’s included in the census is the names of each slaves state as well as their sex and defects and skills. Each defect that the slaves have is listed in the census and any skills that they posses. The maximum range for age is 80 while the minimum range is 1.  The maximum range for the infants months is 11 while the minimum is 0. The geographic range is from the state of Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

Relationship: There are several relationships between some of the columns and rows in the census. One relationship that is in the census is the states relationship with the some of the counties that reside in the states. Each state may have a different relationship with each county located in the state.  Another relationship between the data is the relationship between the sex of each slave and the appraisal number. It looks like the males are appraised at a higher value than the price of a woman slave. Looking at this someone can infer that males are worth more than the females because of the amount of work they can do as well as the type of work they can do. Another relationship from the census is the relationship between age and appraisal. It appears that male and female slaves between the ages of 22-30 are more valuable than the males and females that are over that age range. This is appears to be the ideal age range that slave owners would like to have their slaves. The men are more productive and the women are more likely to have healthy children within this age range. As for women, their appraisals are less than the males even if their ages are closely related. If the slaves have any defects it may lower their value as well, depending on the severity of the defect. This is due to the fact that if a slave has a serious defect they won’t be able to be as productive as another slave that is perfectly fine. A relationship that is in the census is the skills that some of these slaves posses adds to their value. They are able to do tasks that the average slave can’t do, therefore makes them more diverse than the other slaves.

One thought on “Final Proposal

  • April 11, 2016 at 9:44 PM
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    You’re on a good track with the age, skill and gender ideas. You’ll need to try a couple different visualization drafts to find examples that will be useful–try looking for what the most common male vs female skills are (measure>count) or the average age of men with certain skills.

    You’ve got some very good observations in your second section, but be careful to not overstate correlation as causation. That is, just because you can see a relationship between two things doesn’t necessarily mean that one causes the other–a lot of what you’re getting at in your second section would more properly be in your further research section of the final paper, because you’re just not going to be able to show the mindset or intentions of the white enslavers from the data you have to hand. There’s certainly suggestions there, but not a clear cause-and-effect; sometimes overstating an argument’s evidence can weaken it just as much as not providing enough evidence to start with.

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