When I was at this talk, I was amazed by what was yet another example of how advanced technology is being put to practical use. This website is very useful in not only finding demographics and data information on multitudinous statistics of New York City’s population based on race, neighborhood and income, among many other criteria. What amazed me was how such large heaps of information have been gathered, collected, and meticulously organized into one website for any layperson to peruse through to their heart’s content. The information is available for both the average person as well as a professional and it can be used in a variety of ways. I found this plasticity to be quite alluring and immediately realized its potential for our own project, as we will be performing this sort of research for our documentary of our respective neighborhoods. Like some of my classmates noted, I also didn’t like the color schemes, but at the same time, I realize that with so many divisions and different categories, it is hard to differentiate, because there are only so many colors in our visible spectrum, anyway. If there were one thing I’d change about this site, however, it would be to maybe differentiate the colors more, or find different, more visually perceptible ways of presenting the data. For now, however, the color schemes work wonderfully because they do a good job at getting the message across, in terms of showing large trends of change over large spans of area and time.

– Nadera Rahman