Research

Through my education at The University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, I had the opportunity to complete fascinating research on a variety of different topics relating to human geography, demographics, and environmental concepts. On this page, you will find some of the most important research assignments I completed.

City Facts Analysis Project

For this project, the dynamics of two cities were to be compared. One had to have a decreasing population, and one had to have a increasing population. I chose to analyze Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Denver, Colorado. First, the population trends were explored. After this, education attainment for the population that is 25 years and older, as well as bachelor's degree fields for those who attained one were looked at. Lastly, the demographic composition of both cities was analyzed. The graphics that we created using our codes and scripts, including charts, tables, and graphs are not only a crucial part of understanding the data, but better representing it for others to interpret. The R-Studio program was used to make all of the graphics and interpret the data. The relationship between all four of these concepts, and the trends for each individual city proved to be very interesting.

Figure 1: Population change.

Figure 2: Education attainment by city.

Figure 3: Bachelors degree fields.

Figure 4: Race composition of Pittburgh.

Figure 5: Race composition of Denver.

The results of this research showed a few different things. First, the overall trends in population were very clear. Denver showed substantial growth, an increase 132,713 people over the 12 year time period. The Pittsburgh population decreased by 6, 717 people from 2010 to 2020. From 2020 to 2022, the population actually increased a bit, possibly due to city revitalization. In terms of education attainment, the results were quite varied. Notably, Denver had higher bachelor's degree rates, but Pittsburgh had more graduate or professional degrees. As for the fields in which people are going their bachelor's degrees in, science and engineering were the highest in both of the cities, while education was the lowest. The results from the other fields are above. Without getting too deep into the percentages of each race, white was the majority in each city. That being said, Pittsburgh had a much higher Black or African American population compared to Denver, that had more "Some Other Race Alone", "Two or More Races".

Job to Job Flow Project

For this project, we had to compare the job flow from two or more places and discuss why we believe it happens. I decided to think about areas with particularly high concentrations of jobs. I chose to look at the states of New Jersey and New York. These highly urban areas have a very high concentration of jobs. The question being answered was: Which state has the more variety of job inflow from around the country, and which NAICS job sectors are leaving the states the least and most? The data for this came from the United States Census Bureau Job-to-Job Flows Explorer, and R-Studio was used for the graphics and analyses. First, there are two networks that show what states the most jobs came from for New York and New Jersey. The thicker the line, the greater the inflow from those states.

Figure 1: Inflow network for NJ.

Figure 2: Inflow network for NY.

Figure 3: NAICS sects outflow from NJ.

Figure 4: NAICS sects outflow from NY.

As seen from the figures, the job flow into the state of a New Jersey is mostly from the surrounding states of Pennsylvania and New York. There were also some higher values from Florida, Massachusetts, and Virgina. Job inflow to New York also largely came from surroundings states, like New Jersey and Pennsylvania. While higher values were associated with states like Florida, Massachusetts and Virgina, there were other states that were not seen with the N.J analysis. California and Texas stood out as western states that were seen with high inflow to N.Y. Many jobs come into these two states from other states. But what job sects are leaving these states? Job outflow from New Jersey and New York largely happened in the Health Care and Social Assistance NAICS Sector. Another commonality was in the Mining, Quarrying, Oil and Natural Gas Extraction. This sect had the lowest outflow in both states. The relationship between job inflow and job outflow, as well as NAICS sectors in these two highly populated states proved to be fascinating.