Lab 4: Introducing ArcMap

I found the ArcMap tutorial to be very informative and helpful with understanding how to use GIS. The first four exercises were very straight forward and made it very easy for a first time user to follow along without any problems. Aside from a few hiccups, I worked through the these exercises very quickly and obtained the same results that were seen in the diagrams from the tutorial.

The last exercise I really enjoyed because they weren't as straight forward with the steps. They told you what you were supposed to do, and based on the previous exercises, you had to find out how to do that. This allowed me to realize how much I had learned so far and really test my skills with the program. Although the steps didn't really deal with data, I think that tinkering around with the formatting still allows a user to feel more comfortable using the program on future projects. I understand the importance of going through the tutorial multiple times in order to truly understand what each step means for the analysis of GIS.

Although the tutorial was very easy to use, it was also obvious that there were some pitfalls with using the program. First of all, it was not always clear how to take parts of information from one data set and use it with parts of another map. This means, although I was able to work through the tutorial easily, I do not know if I would be able to obtain similar results with my own data and analysis. Also, it is very easy to make mistakes using GIS and ArcMaps. The user has to be very careful to keep track of units, make sure proper figures are selected with doing any formatting or analysis, and verify that their analysis is valid and applicable.

Despite these pitfalls, ArcMaps and GIS has a lot of potential for creating very informative maps. GIS allows us to take data stored in different maps and overlap them onto each other in order to create many different maps with new information. Combining data is very fast and simple once a user has mastered using the program. It allows for simple formatting and has many features that makes the types of maps a person can make endless. GIS and ArcMaps is a very important tool that will continue to be used for creating informative and easy to read maps.