In the coming year we’ll be looking at inequalities in wealth around the world. One way of looking at this is via the two maps above from the WORLDMAPPER website. Countries are scaled by the population, in the first image, and wealth in the second.
They also distribute some animated maps as well as free software, called ScapeToad, that you can use to make your own maps. I like the fact that their maps and software are clearly licensed and allow free educational use.
I’ve had a number of posts based on stuff I learned this summer at the Fed. Most of it has been about the resources and tools they have available on their website and it can be a little intimidating trying to figure out how to actually use all of this data.
So the Fed has created Resource Guide Plus, a collection of activities, simulations, publications and tools for the classroom. The activities have pretty good instructions and use the resources available on the Fed’s website. They were kind enough to post the math and economics activity I worked on at the meeting (also posted here) in their Tips and Tools section.
The activities are searchable and geared mostly toward middle and high school though there are some elementary ones in there too.
The Boston Federal Reserve Bank publishes (occasionally) a newsletter with easy-to-read articles on economic subjects. Themes include: Immigration; Economic Resources on the web (as 2008); Coping with economic change; Varied Perspectives on the Global Economy; Are We Better Off Than We Were?; and, The Economics of Entertainment.
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.
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.
The St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank has started a video competition for college students to present economic information. The first competition was to explain opportunity costs.
Unemployment data for the Eastern US from GeoFRED.
GeoFred produces graphs like the one above showing economic statistics across the country. It can do it on a state by state basis, by county (as above), or by even more refined areas.
FRED plots graphs and even provides the data for economic statistics over time. The graph above shows GDP since they started collecting data in the 1940’s. It also has the times of recessions shaded in. The data in the graph can also be downloaded if you want to do your own analysis.
These seem to be handy little tools for teaching and for research projects, and are pretty easy to use.
The teachers’ training sessions are free though you have to get your own housing. They do provide breakfast and lunch. If you want graduate credit for them however, each three day session will cost around $306 and garner one credit.
