Creating Derived Data:

• After manipulating the raw data I collected off the internet, into an acceptable format for use in Idrisi, creating value added or customized data was the next logical step.  Some derived data was immediately needed for analysis to begin.  The derived data was all done inside Idrisi's database workshop.  It is not the most flexible database management system.  However, I was able to calculate field values for entire columns using mathematical or logical expression, which was all that was necessary.

• The need for derived data was due to the fact that the counties were all different sizes and hence for many types of analysis were not directly comparable (at least not sensibly).

Florida Data Sets:

• felect.mdb
• fcensus.mdb
• felect.mdb is the cleaned up version of the data which originally was florida.dbf (from fl election.zip).  The data was originally compiled from unofficial county level election data in the USA Today newspaper.  The non-election data (census data) was removed after being copy and pasted into fcensus.  felect.mdb also contains derived data created in database workshop as it was needed.


Fields created:

margin - margin between Al Gore and George W. Bush (- means Gore and + means Bush)
%margin - margin multiplied by 100
winner2 - boolean where 'bush' = 1 and 'gore' = 2, used to create an election map
• fcensus.mdb is the cleaned up version of data collected from the University of Virginia's GeoStats website and data copy and pasted out of florida.dbf (from fl election.zip).  Most of the data is from the 1990 census.  This data set contains valuable information about the population demographics, income levels, and education levels, in the State of Florida.  The most obscure piece of data found was the number of mobile homes per county and i'm sure some how i'll try to incorporate it into the project.


Fields created:

male/female - the ratio of males to females
minorities - total of all minority groups
minorites/white - the ratio of minorites to whites

Country-Wide Data Sets:

• states.mdb
• This data set is the cleaned up version of tables that were copy and pasted out of the Federal Election Commission's website.  After copying and pasting all the data into an excel worksheet, all data that was not needed for the project was deleted.  Once it was imported into Idrisi several fields of derived data were created from the raw data.


Fields created:

margin - margin between Al Gore and George W. Bush (- means Gore and + means Bush)
%margin - margin multiplied by 100
margin2 - margin squared, then square rooted (gets rid of negative numbers)
nader>margin - 1 where (margin2 - nader) < 0 or 0 where (margin2 - nader) <= 0
nader-buchanan - Ralph Nader's votes - Pat Buchanan's votes
nader-buchanan>margin - 1 where (nader-buchanan > margin) or 0 where (nader-buchanan <= margin)
winner - boolean, 1 where margin > 0 (bush) or 2 where margin < 0 (Gore), 0 not possible