For this assignment, you will create a crime map of your own. Instead of doing

For this assignment, you will create a crime map of your own. Instead of doing an international comparison, your crime map will focus only on the state of Texas. You will be mapping data from the 2019 Texas Crime Statistics Summary, which is provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety. The spreadsheet provides a summary of Index crimes (excluding arson) for each county in Texas in 2017. Please use this link to download the Crime Statistics Summary spreadsheet: Texas Crime Report 2019.xlsx
The spreadsheet has a Document Map that lists all reporting counties in Texas. Click on a county name to be taken to the county statistics page. To return to the Document Map and review a different county, follow the “Return to Document Map” link available at the top of each statistics page.
Crime Map Construction
To construct your crime map, please follow the step by step instructions below:
Choose ONE index crime to map. Use the spreadsheet provided above to identify the Rate Per 100,000 for that particular crime in each county in Texas.
Create a color system for your crime map. You must use between 5 and 10 different colors for your crime map. Each color will represent a crime rate range.
Once you have identified the number of crime rate ranges you will use in your map, create the ranges themselves. Make sure your ranges include the lowest Rate Per 100,000 and the highest Rate Per 100,000 that you found in the spreadsheet for your index crime. I recommend keeping the ranges similar in size. For example, if the Rate Per 100,000 goes from 0 to 150, then I would recommend using 10 categories of 15 points each. So range one would be 0 – 15, range two would be 16 – 30, so on and so forth. Each range must have its own unique color.
Color the Texas County Map (provided here) using the color system you created above. The map is provided in a PDF form, so you can complete the coloring using a computer program or print it out and color the map by hand. If you decide to color the map by hand, you will need to scan the map (in color) and submit the scanned image. If there are any counties on the map that did not report UCR data in the spreadsheet, you should assign them a different color (usually grey) and label the color as “Not Reported” in the legend.