Texas is not New Mexico!

I was really impressed by this New Mexico Soap. New Mexico is a soap making company.  The photo above is of a product called ‘lather as you learn’ state shaped bar. They have soaps in the shapes of all the states. However, I still wonder why they make Texas shaped soap with a label of New Mexico on it!!

How the state got their boundaries?

Now that my both GIS classes are over this weekend was ‘assignments free’ after quite a while. I watched couple of movies, went for shopping, had delicious dinner, spent some time with my husband and played United States Map Puzzle. That’s right, played map puzzle for fun. Contrary to my initial thought it was quite a challenge to recognize the states from their shape. Of all the states, California, Texas, and Florida has easily recognizable shape.

 I wondered how all these states got their boundary. My search for my question gave me a book- How the States got their shape, by Mark Stein. Here is the book’s first introductory page.

Now I really want to know, why West Virginia has a finger creeping up the side of Pennsylvania and why Texas and California are so outsized?!

Second atlas page of final project of mine.

My second map for the final project is “Contribution of Pennsylvania to Pediatric Healthcare’. I wanted to use Network Analysis Method to show proximity of each health center but didn’t work out in the time constrain and available data.

I like to thank my husband at this point to help me get required data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and FREIDA. I used services and catchment provided by tertiary healthcare centers as the outcome. At first glance I thought it was such a disproportionate distribution of the healthcare in the state. But then my favorite census data came to the rescue!  After applying the healthcare catchment and pediatric population data for each county to the map, it became obvious that the tertiary healthcare system in Pennsylvania is strategically placed. More than 75% of total pediatric population is covered in 60miles proximity of one or other health center. The programs are CHIP, WIC and hospitals are CHOP puts Pennsylvania as a leader in pediatric healthcare.