My experience with ArcMap these past two weeks have been interesting, yet a little bit annoying. On one hand, the outcomes from using GIS correctly are very rewarding. You get to collect data and numbers and mash them up together to create an informative, visual representation of that data. I love the fact that you can layer data, which means you can switch between different layers by turning them on/off depending on what you want to visualize. There's no need for two or three maps, the layers make it so that you only need one.
On the other hand, GIS can get annoying. It is very technical by nature, so anyone attempting to use it without previous experience will most likely run in to some troubles. In fact, just trying to complete this project I realized that if you make a mistake it is difficult to go back and correct that mistake. In addition, it is even difficult to pinpoint where you made the mistake. The program is also very tedious, with lots of steps to complete a representation. All in all, GIS is a time-consuming and technical program.
Despite this pitfall, GIS has incredible potential to influence people. Just in this project I was able to see the population density and noise levels in a geographic region. Experts using GIS can use it to represent a huge variety of events and phenomenon. For example, it can be used to show rates of a certain disease in the United States of America. This brings the disease to the attention of the public in a stronger way than pure statistics would. When people can visualize things they are more affected by it. However, GIS's power to influence people is also one of its biggest pitfalls. GIS maps depend on data and statistics. So, if the data happens to be off, it could give the people a false representation and mislead them.
From this lab I learned both how rewarding and tedious GIS can be. Seeing data come to life in a visual representation is amazing, but it does require some expertise. And despite GIS's pitfalls of being tedious and possibly misleading, the pros do exceed the cons in my opinion.
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