new jersey geographer

I’m proud to say that I now have two articles written about my work that have been featured on the Rowan University home page.

Most recently, Mapping the Guard (still on the home page) was posted, detailing the great work performed by students for the New Jersey National Guard. I’m very pleased to be heading up this internship program, because I feel that the students leaving the program will be excellent candidates for GIS positions. The students are learning about SDSFIE and other data schema, how to edit data in a multi-user environment, and working with web-based GIS services.

Way back when I was still an adjunct, Mapping the Campus in Layers was written. It’s a good read, because now that I’m at the University full time, I’ve worked to put the pieces together so that we can do much more.

Check back within two weeks about one of the projects we’re working on now. It might not be front-page material, but I’m sure you’ll find it interesting.

I recently requested from the NJ Lottery a list of all the big prize winners, from 1988 to 2008. The winner’s location information is reported by ZIP Code, so I now have a map of the winners plotted out across the state and region.

Among the values mapped for each ZIP code area are the number of winners within, the total amount won, and a location quotient value that highlights areas where the number of winners in each ZIP code is far greater than the average distribution of winners throughout the state. Clicking on the map will highlight the ZIP code area selected, provide a summary of the statistics I have recorded, and allow you to see the entire list of winners by game, amount won and date.

So, here’s the Top 5 ZIP codes by number of winners, total amount one, and by location quotient ratio. The links will bring you to the Geography of Luck page.

Number of Winners

• 07002: 222
• 07083: 178
• 08753: 161
• 07111: 152
• 07055: 146

Amount Won

• 07070: $180,832,210.10
• 08221: $129,030,839.52
• 07010: $97,466,773.00
• 07002: $82,966,249.31
• 07090: $65,758,689.67

Location Quotient

• 07842: 22.2007 (2 winners in a ZIP code of 47 people for a total of $1,374,417.60 won.)
• 07428: 17.6869 (2 winners in a ZIP code of 59 people for a total of $20,000.00 won.)
• 07970: 15.4585 (8 winners in a ZIP code of 270 people for a total of $318,703.00 won.)
• 08036: 14.6081 (7 winners in a ZIP code of 250 people for a total of $288,700.44 won.)
• 07846: 9.6618 (1 winner in a ZIP code of 54 people for a total of $20,000.00 won.)

The location quotient is the (number of winners in ZIP/total number of winners)/(number of people in ZIP/total number of people).

I’m still working on some additional functionality, so if you think of any way I can improve this (or any other map on NJ State Atlas), please let me know in the comments, or by leaving feedback on Get Satisfaction. This project is done entirely in my spare time, so please be understanding if something is broken or not-quite-yet-perfect.