hey watch this I'm about to blow your mind you know sometimes you're sitting around and you're like I kind of want a burrito the size of my face and then you get in your car and you look up the closest Chipotle and then this little device tells you exactly where it is how are you not falling out of your seat right now like that's astonishing so the question is how does this thing know where my burrito is but more to the point for AP Human Geography how does all the geographic information on any map get collected you have to know the answer to that question for AP Human Geography unit once so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked well let's get to it so they're essentially two entities that care enough to gather Geographic data oh by the way if you want note guys to follow along with this video so that all the information finds at home deep in your brain Falls well then check the link below anyway first individuals gather Geographic data so maybe that individual is a researcher and is trying to plot the spatial spread of disease so the plans and policies can create it to stop the spread remember our boy Jon Snow from the last video yeah that's exactly what he did with the spread of Cholera in London or maybe the individual is a community advocate Gathering data about traffic patterns at a local intersection so that people don't get in as many accidents that regardless these individuals often record their Geographic data in the form of field observations which is when a researcher or geographer physically visits the location and makes written observations about what they see so they might write an account or take photographs or interview residents of that location to gather information through questionnaire and then in addition to field observations Geographic data can be gathered through travel narratives which are written accounts of a person's travel for example our boy IBN batuta who was a Muslim scholar and Explorer in the 14th century and he covered a metric butt load of land in his various travels I mean the guy traveled something like 75 000 miles in his lifetime to which I say anyway his travel narrative was packed with Geographic and cultural observations that had significant effects on map making during that period and Beyond or in some cases media reports can be good sources of geographic data as well the media often show up to locations to tell stories which include details of the people living there and the geographic location in which they live and geographers are like well that's nice I'll take that okay now the second kind of entity that is concerned together Geographic data are organizations and they can be businesses or government agencies or whatever and these organizations tend to have much larger budgets so they can gather data at a much larger scale than the Schmo out in the field with his notebook writing field observation if I pull up Google Maps they tell me how much traffic is on the way like what kind of freaky witchcraft is this like how do they know well people have been using Google Maps for a long time and every time anyone uses it Google is collecting data about where they go and what they do how about the traffic was Etc daddy Google is always watching but I got to admit I hardly mind because you know this is real useful but also governments collect Geographic data for their own purpose for example here in the United States every 10 years the government takes a census which gathers all kinds of information about its citizens like where they live how old they are what religion they practice at seven and then all that data is used to make decisions about policies to pass or how to allocate representatives in Congress because more or less people in an area means more or less Representatives okay now real quick when it comes to data there are two terms that you're going to see hurled around and you got to know what they mean so quantitative data is numbers based information it's about counting things like there are 400 houses in that neighborhood or there are five million people that live in that City whatever qualitative data describes the characteristics or the qualities of that data so qualitative data won't tell you how many houses are in this neighborhood but it could tell you how the residents feel satisfied or unsatisfied about living in a neighborhood with that many houses so quantitative County County qualitative feely field and now let's turn the corner and talk about the methods used for Gathering Geographic data now I've already mentioned a couple methods like field observations and media reports and travel narratives but here we're going to consider the big boys namely geospatial technology this is a blanket term for all the hardware and software that can examine and measure geographical features on the earth so first you have global positioning system known by its nastier name gpn that's what you see on Google Maps GPS is a collaboration with my device and a network of U.S government satellites that orbit the earth twice daily so by communicating with at least four of those satellites they can tell me exactly where I am or my absolute location and the absolute location of the Chipotle and then tell me how to get there okay the second geospatial technology you need to know is called geographic information systems or GIS and this is software which can manipulate Geo spatial data that can be used for research or problem solving now don't get confused between GPS and GIS GPS is used for determining location but GIS is technology for analyzing data for the purpose of answering research-based questions so for example GIS software can produce a map showing the spatial distribution of factories that dump nasty pollution into the environment and then compare it to the location of environmentally sensitive areas like Wetlands but this kind of analysis isn't just reserved for the researchers thanks to the rise of various online mapping platforms non-scholarly rabble like you and me can access all this data and answer our own questions okay it's a third geospatial technology you need to know is called remote sensing and this can be done in two ways first remote sensing can gather geographic information through satellite imagery which can help visualize population patterns and other geospatial information for example look at this image of North and South Korea at night lots of Lights in South Korea but North Korea not so much Kim likes it and that image can tell you a lot about the wealth and different levels of development in each place but also remote sensing can be done with aerial photography for places that need more detailed information gathered like major cities can I have a burrito the size of my face would you like walk on it obviously and so because of all that Geographic data I'm about to crush this burrito all right click here to keep reviewing unit one and click down here to get the note guides to follow along with every dang video of the whole course I mean don't tell anyone but if you're not really into reading your textbook then these notes are going to help you get everything you need to do well in this course all right I'll catch you on the flip-flop I'm Laura