Category: Social World

Learn math and economics using GeoFRED

The activity below was created as part of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank’s Summer School Program session on using Data and Primary Source Documents. I plan to use it as a whole-class activity during the upcoming year and I’ll post updates after I try it (check the economics tag).

Unemployment rate by state - 1977 to 2009. Maps from GeoFRED.

Averaging and Graphing with GeoFRED

Objectives:

  • Introduce GeoFRED as a tool for analyzing real economic data over space.
  • Learn/practice graphing.
  • Practice basic averaging using real data.
  • Prepare and deliver group presentations.

Resources:

Initial presentation to entire class

Show animation of unemployment in the US (by state) over their lifetimes (e.g. 1998-2009). The pdf file Geofred-annual-unemp-1995-2009 has the maps from 1995 to 2009 that you can click through to animate. Alternatively, you can create the pdf yourself from the GeoFRED Graph. A final option, if you’re desperate, is to use the animated gif above.

  • Note: point out the effect of Hurricane Katrina on Louisiana (compare 2005 and 2006).
  • See if students can identify interesting changes that they are curious about. The intention is to get students interested in the data and asking questions and give ideas about why the changes have occurred in general and for specific states.

Group/individual work

The class picks a state that they’re interested in (everyone has to do the same state to bring the data back together at the end) and:

  • each group/individual gets the 12 months of data for one year in the time series (from the website).
  • They create a graph (line or bar students get the choice) of their 12 months of data.
    • Note: If we provide students with poster paper and a uniform scale for their axes they could merge their data at the end to create one very long graph. Alternately, if they all produce their own, very different, graphs they might produce nicer graphs that they’re more invested in, and better appreciate the need to calculate the averages when combining all the data.)
  • They average their 12 months of data to get the annual average.
  • Discuss among themselves why things might have changed the way they did over the year
    • Do research (perhaps the beige book archive (very good regional summaries) or burgundy books (can’t find a long archive) and/or Wikipedia) to find out about why the changes may have occurred.
    • Prepare a short presentation about their year for the rest of the class based on what they found (including their graph).

Class reconvenes

Now for presentations, discussion and integration.

  • Each group gives a short presentation about what they found.
  • The groups bring their averages together to plot a graph for the entire 12 years.
  • Discuss how things changed over time – recessions when and why.

Advanced work

Now that students know how to use GeoFRED they can pose and answer a research question, perhaps one that came up during the initial presentation of the animation.

Additional suggestions

Instead of doing this by state, we could do it by Fed district to see how the regional economic systems are very different.

Sinkholes

Image from Gobierno de Guatemala.

The caves at Meramec were created in dissolved carbonate rocks; that’s how most caves with interesting cave formation form. The recent storms in Guatemala, along with leaky sewage pipes, have helped speed the dissolution process producing some devastating sinkholes.

[googleMap name=”Guatemala City” description=”Guatemala City” width=”450″ height=”400″ mapzoom=”4″ mousewheel=”false”]Guatemala City[/googleMap]

Spelunking at Meramec

Stalactites dripping down into a subterranean pool at Meramec Caverns.

On the last day of our trip we drove an hour west of St. Louis to Meramec Caverns. If you’re ever on I44 heading out of St. Louis you can’t miss it. From 30 km away you start seeing billboards, sometimes in pairs, almost every 100 meters.

Largely this is because it is a privately owned cave. Privately owned also means that they can do things to “enhance” the cave that you would not see at a National Park like Mammoth Cave. The light shows in certain caves were particularly interesting. Our tour guide was pretty good, entertaining and scientifically accurate for a general audience.

Colors created by different metal anion precipitates.

The presence of different colors in the rock formations (red, white and black) due to different metals in the carbonate precipitates could tie in very well with our discussion earlier this year of ionic bonding.

There are also historical tie-ins. The cave was the site of a skirmish during the civil war, because the bat guano was being used to produce gunpowder. Jesse James participated in that engagement and later used the cave as a hideout.

Still

Finally, they have a reconstructed hut, which although it has nothing to do with the cave, has a bootlegger’s still does link with our discussion of steam distillation.

Playing with real economic data (FRED)

Long term unemployment

The Federal Reserve’s data website produces graphs using the same economic data that the Federal Reserve uses to make decisions about the nation’s economy. The above graph, showing long term unemployment in the U.S., combines the unemployment numbers based on how long people have been unemployed from four data series (<5 weeks, 5-14 weeks, >= 15 weeks, >27 weeks). You see howthe site makes the combinations you want, and produces the graph.

St. Louis overview

View of St. Louis from the top of the Arch.

I had not particularly wanted to go up into the St. Louis Arch myself, but the students really wanted to and we had a little time to spare after the Science Museum. So I grabbed tickets for the last tram to the top, and I’m glad I did. Looking down on the city and river from above you could, in an almost tactile way, reconcile the geographic elements with the history that we’d talked so much about at Anheuser-Busch.

Eads Bridge across the Mississipi River in St. Louis.

Standing in line, waiting for the tram to the top, we were treated to a short documentary on the Eads Bridge, the first across the Mississippi in St. Louis. The video stressed the importance of the bridge in allowing the city to become the gateway for westward expansion.

The tram arrived and small rectangular doors opened up to reveal tiny escape pods fit for a spaceship. Five of us squeezed in, fortunately we were all friendly. The distinct possibility of claustrophobia tinged the air. Three minutes 47 seconds later we reached the top. Forty-five degree rain was pouring down outside. The wind was so strong you could, if you held still and waited for it, feel a slight sway in the Arch itself.

Barges in the distance.
Grain silos and transhipment docks.

Looking east we saw the mighty Mississippi. Not quite so mighty as it is in Memphis, which is downstream of the confluence with the Ohio River, but enormous nonetheless. On the river, huge barges carried freight cars with unknown cargo south toward New Orleans. Just below, an helicopter sat on an helipad barge waiting for an emergency call. Directly across the water, on the east bank, enormous silos with their own docks waited to load barges with grain collected from across the mid-west.

It was still pouring when we left the Arch, and the rain continued on even during dinner. But leaving the restaurant, heading back to the hotel, the setting sun to the west, refracted through raindrops over the river, created one of nature’s own ephemeral monuments. A poignant reminder that forty-five, or even one hundred and forty-five years are but a moment in the deep span of geologic time.

Segway lessons

From playing with robots we tried an actual application of robotics. We had the Segways 101 course at the St. Louis Science Center.

The lesson itself was fun, with an entertaining video of people falling off Segways. They also had a little obstacle course to let you try doing all of the things the video told you not to do (but most of it was for the more advanced class).

Afterward, we discussed the fact that this too was robotics and a pretty advanced application at that. We did not talk much about how the Segways were supposed to revolutionize urban transportation but students did recognize the fact that aesthetics were a major impediment to their broader adoption.

The price was a bit steep however, and I’m a little conflicted about if it was worth it.