Course on "People and the Polls" for Spring 2010

It's almost Advising Week here at Trinity, which means its time for Trinity students to start thinking about what they want to take next semester. I'll be teaching a new class on "People and the Polls" (see the course description here). Among other things, I want to have the students in the course examine the unrolling of the 2010 Census. All aboard! Sign up now!

Region specific data

In a class offered this semester at Trinity, students will be asked to experiment with data visualization (read: Edward Tufte). Since the students will be working with the Hispanic Health Council here in Hartford, they are going to need health data--specifically on cancer rates for Hispanics--in the Hartford region.

I have found that getting regional data of this sort can be complicated, so it's worth documented what I found to be useful for the kind of basic charts and tables these students may be making...

• the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System allows you to sort look at preventative behaviors, sorted by state and ethnicity
• the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System allows you to do something similar for adults
• the National Women's Health Indicators Database, despite its name, gives detailed data for women and men, sorted by state, county, ethnicity, and type of cancer (bladder, breast, etc.)
  

we've been covered

People still remember and notice work our Invisible Cities students conducted over eight months ago. A recent post in the Undercurrents Blog cites our food resources map.