Final Draft Religion in NY

For my final project of this class, the visual data that I have chosen to use provide insight on the number of churches within a denomination within a county in New York. This data was collected every ten years starting in 1850 going through 1890 but did not include 1880. To depict these number I used geograph graph of New York  and bar chart to show to show the data set. The vibrant colors of each graph appeals the eye’s, as you look at the information presented, you can see that some of the information correlates with one another to tell a story. A bar graphs create distinctions when look at the bar chart a person’s eyes will focus colors but another factor will be the length of the bars is helps the viewer understand what is going on. I chose to use the bar graph as my visual because its gives the audience the sheer number of churches that were in New York during 1850-1890. Unfortentual by using this bar chart it shows the total number of churches in a denomination, it doesn’t break down even further by showing in which counties these churches were located. This bar chart is not a standard graph with one set of bars, rather four small bar charts because of years the data set was collect put into one massive bar chart. Though I believe  that it gets the point across visually without having the audience look at spreadsheet prior in order to analyze the data that is being presented to them. I chose the palette colors because it was aesthetically pleasing to the eye. For my bar chart I would rather have the lengthen of the bars tell a story than the colors. In context during the course of fifty years the promett denomination that thrived in New York was the Methodist and the Baptist and Congregational. Almost double in size by the start in 1850-1890. I believe that this increase of church correlates with Immigration that was going during this data set was collected. The first waves of immigration to the United States happen in 1840-1860. These immigrants were mostly Irish and German. The second wave develop in 1880-1940 around where are data set stopped. The immigrants that were arriving to the United States were mostly eastern and southern europeans. During the first wave on average about 2.4 million came to the land of opportunity. For the second wave on average about 5.2 million came to America. This example the sudden increase Judaism at the end during the 1890. Because Judaism is a promett religion is the eastern and southern parts of europe. Further research question I have is why is the Quaker churches slowing decreasing in number? Because of this influx of immigrants why did the Dutch Reform stay close to the same number through the fifty years?

2 thoughts on “Final Draft Religion in NY

  • April 20, 2016 at 10:59 PM
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    Be careful with your proofreading, even for short draft pieces–you’ve got some apostrophes where you don’t need them (eyes, not eye’s), and some grammatical and spelling typos (Unfortentual, promett) that make your meaning less clear in places. You’ve also got some incomplete sentences in places, which make it difficult to follow your argument.

    You’ve got a really good, compelling point regarding immigration and religion–if you plan to follow this for the final version of the project, make sure to cite where you’re getting those numbers from. This might help you figure out the Quaker question, or you might need to table some of those (very good) questions in your last section for the “further research questions” section of the final post.

    For your question re: change over time, you might want to try an area graph, which will give you a sense of the proportion relative to other denominations. If you want more detail by county, try dragging county into the columns or rows section, which will give you an individual graph for each county–if that’s too much detail, you could do a filter or quick filter to just show one or two counties at a time, which will make it easier to compare.

  • April 20, 2016 at 11:06 PM
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    Your circle pack could likewise be helpful in showing differences between counties–try using your denomination and county both as labels, and color as denomination (the order you put them in will determine how your circles are grouped). You may also want to put an interactive quick filter for year on your circle graph so you can see change over time.

    This may be a pain in the butt, but if the number of counties is too much detail, you might consider grouping your counties by region, so that you end up with western counties in one group, eastern/capital district counties in another, finger lakes counties in another, etc etc. This will show you regional variation without the over whelming detail of county-by-county, but will take some time to do.

    Your red/blue map by denomination is very, very good. That would be a great one to use to talk about regional differences between denominations over time.

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