Education in Texas found using Wikipedia and Internet Access in Households Comparison
The students were given the opportunity to make a comparison between different Census API data to tell a compelling story. The different topics I decided to compare were “Presence and Types of Internet Subscriptions in Household”, “Field of Bachelor’s Degree for First Major for the Population 25 Years and Over”, and the page views of “Category: Texas counties”. The idea behind this analysis was to compare the number of page views in the different Wikipedia pages based on the predetermined cities I’ll be looking at in the state of Texas: Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Waco, and Fort Worth. But because the Wikipedia page views are at looking at the different Texas counties, I’ll be evaluating each Census API data by the counties: Austin County, Bexar County, Dallas County, McLennan County, and Tarrant County, respectively.
What sparked this curiosity was the knowledge that Texas is one of the leading states with big technology and has well known universities for technology and engineering. On the other hand, there are multiple large tech companies that are utilizing their own search engines or databases, innovating new devices and websites for development in our everyday lives. This leads to the question: “How do the Wikipedia page views for each county chosen compare to the number of people who have internet access and have graduated with majors related to technology and engineering? Is there any trend in the number of views for each respective county to the change in internet access or majors in these counties?” With all these new startups and people moving to larger states with technology heavy cities, I’m curious if people are moving to these specific cities, like how more people are moving to Boulder.
My hypothesis is that there will be a small number of page views on the different Wikipedia pages because Wikipedia isn’t very common when it comes to searching up the different county information and sometimes not seen as a “reliable source” because of the always changing information on each page, in regards to research purposes. This is also another fair point to take into consideration when utilizing the number of page views, “Will the data on page views for the Wikipedia pages reliable for this analysis?”
Census API Data
Above shows the number people that do and don’t have internet access, whether they use satellite or cable, or if they use cellular data within Austin, San Antonio, Waco, Dallas, and Fort Worth. What was interesting is that there are more than half the people in each city of Texas that use satellite internet, broadband, and cellular data in comparison to those who use other internet subscriptions. But, what caught me by surprise the most is that there are just about the same number of people who don’t have internet access as compared to people with satellite internet service in each city. I wonder if that has to do with the city itself not being well known, in the somewhat poverty state or if it has to do with government job occupations. For example, in the U.S. General Services Administration, there are government buildings within each city chosen, except for Waco, and I’m curious to see if they are able to share this kind of information with the Census API, given that the Census API is a government job, or if the government uses a different source of network rather than the internet. But, the assumption about government buildings not having internet is not valid within the context of this data analysis because the data shown is for households with internet access and/or subscriptions.
Another thought that might lead to the number of households that don’t have internet access is because they are more impoverished in comparison to other households. According to the List of Texas locations per capita income, it shows that McLennan is the poorest county out of the other counties chosen with a median household income of $40,672 and a median family income of $51,191. On the other hand, Tarrant county, where Fort Worth city is, is the wealthiest out of the 5 counties chosen $55,306 in median household income and $65,351 for median family income. This leaves me curious to “How are there still households without internet access?” The internet just seems like the center of our world today where everything that we use runs on electricity and even just within the educational system, schools utilize the internet as a central resource.
In the same way, various universities, especially in Texas, have many majors focused on technology and utilizes the internet. As we can see below a majority of the cities accept Fort Worth extend to about 10,000 people who graduated from a university with Science and Engineering and/or a Related Field, and Business.
One thing that I’m finding interesting is that even though Fort Worth is the wealthiest city out of Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, and Waco, it is showing lower data points compared to the others cities. But, it might be because the city has a lower population compared to the other cities, with a population of 956,709, whereas Dallas has a population of 1.3 million people. In the same way, when comparing these two line graphs where the first line graph shows the majors based on the city, it shows that Austin and San Antonio have the greatest number of people from each major from the Census API. But, once we were comparing the counties, Austin and Dallas county both dropped significantly, where McLennan (Waco) and Tarrant (Fort Worth) county take the spots of greatest number of people for that county. This makes me wonder if people not from Texas or live within the area place a significant stereotype where a city may be well known for it’s technology, but isn’t representative of the whole county to the major that most people have and what their income is to have certain internet access.
Internet Access and Majors over the Years
Within both of these bar graphs, it shows that there is a large break in data within the 2012–2014 range. But, this data is still supposed to represent all 5 cities I chose to look at: Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Waco, and Fort Worth. I wonder if that break is referring to one of the cities (but I wouldn’t know which one it is referring to) and there wasn’t any data collected at all from any of the cities during that time period.
From previous statements said above about Texas being seen as a state with lots of high tech growing companies, just with a first glance at this visualization, it shows that there are a lot more people who majored in ‘Arts, Humanities and Others’ and ‘Education’ compared to ‘Science and Engineering’ and ‘Business’. Because of this analysis on those who finished with majors in these areas that it is an effect to why we see some people without internet access? With these two majors, people with these majors are more communicative and spend more of their time with other people, one-on-one, and hearing each others stories. Their occupations would be a teacher, counselor, journalist, consultant, etc., which means that these aren’t technology heavy occupations. Not disregarding the other half of the data that shows that a lot of people have internet access and use different broadbands, I wonder if because these are peoples’ occupation at work and not at home, do people not have internet access at home because they want to utilize this space as a non-working area, where they leave their work at work?
Wikipedia Pageviews Data
Assuming that people mainly use a university’s school website to learn more about their program and students see if they want to pursue their interests and a degree at those universities. But, with this analysis of looking at the Wikipedia page views from each county will give insight to what most people who live in that county are interested in and the rank of the education within the county. One thing to keep in mind too is that evaluating each county at this level doesn’t determine the general interest within the county because there may be people who commute from one city in Texas to another but has no correlation with the education they got or the degree they received.
For the next two visualizations, I will be analyzing the subcategory “number of views for education” in each county from “Category: Texas counties” on Wikipedia. I will be comparing these values to the majors that people have received but also finding curiosities when looking at the number of views and the internet access that people have.
Wikipedia is not the main form for evaluating the education within a county but can be used as a source for parents and students to evaluate when wanting to send their children to a good, prestigious school. As shown above, the number of views throughout the years and on each day are random and fluctuate; there is no specific time of year when each county gets the most views. This is interesting because when looking at CU analytics for enrollment, specifically for the Creative Technology and Design program, there were more visits to our website during college application season in the fall and admission season in the spring, yet with a couple visitors here and there.
According to the bar graph above, it looks like Bexar County has the leading number to the number of views on the Wikipedia page views because of their education, followed by Austin County. This makes sense because San Antonio city is within Bexar County and Austin city is within Austin county, and based on Ramsey Solutions, the first two school districts listed are BASIS Texas Charter Schools, located in San Antonio, and Eanes Independent School District. In the same way, at the collegiate level, San Antonio has Texas A&M, St. Mary’s University, Trinity University, and many more. Austin has UT Austin and McLennan county with Baylor University, in Waco. Base on these universities listed, most of universities listed are well known for their education and social science programs with a couple well known engineering, business, and veterinary programs. This is similar to the categorical data found in the common majors evaluated within each county.
When comparing the Dallas and Tarrant counties, it looks like both counties have the same level of education with values reaching the same number of views throughout the years. In the same way in the graphs shown above, it looks like the page views for Dallas county has a little more page views in comparison to Tarrant county which align with Ramsey Solutions as well because the third ranked school district in Texas is Highlands Park School District. Yet, we find University of Dallas, Texas Christian University and the University of Texas at Arlington within this county comparison. Again, the main degrees found at these university are geared towards medical, business, and social sciences, and less on the engineering side.
Conclusion
In conclusion, based on my assumption of Texas and their technology, my assumptions were made that they are a well known for their use in technology and in engineering. But based on these three evaluations on internet access, education, and what people majored in, most of the education is tailored towards social sciences, business, and the medical field, where more internet usage is used with broadband and satellite usage.
