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Maps and Cartographic Resources

Databases Indexing Cartography and GIS Journals

Using SimplyAnalytics

  1. Make sure you are on campus, or connected to the VPN.
  2. Sign in as guest or create an account and sign in (if you continue as a guest, your work will not be saved).
  3. Click New Project.
  4. Type names of locations of interest into search bar.
  5. Choose variables of interest, or select "Create project without seed variables." Variables can be added to the project later, however, if you select seed variables at the beginning, reports will be automatically generated.
  • To add variables to your project, click on data in the lefthand menu, and locate your variable of interest. You can use the search bar, or browse by category or data source.

  • To add views such as map, histogram, or comparison table, click New View and select desired view.
    • Use the Quick Report view to generate a table of commonly used variables for your saved locations.
    • The Time Series table view will give you the variable's value for recent years.
  • To update a view with new locations or variables, click View Actions, then Edit View.
  • Use the dropdown menus to select which variables to examine, at what location, and at what scale.
  • To add more locations, click locations and type the name in the search bar. 
  • To use the location of a specific address, enter the address, then click address search, and select the desired scale.
  • You can also create custom locations. If you select "Create new radius location," you will be prompted to enter a location and a radius distance. To have two or more locations treated as one location, use the combination location feature. You will be able to select these new locations in the dropdown location menus. 

  • Use the dropdown menus to select which location to highlight.
  • If you are in map view, you can use the businesses menu. Use the search bar to search by name, the advanced search to discover variables like sales volume, number of employees, SIC, and NAICS, or browse by business category.
  • In map view, bubbles will appear showing the location of businesses that meet your search criteria.
  • If you go to New View --> Businesses, the result will be a detailed table, with information from all the businesses that meet your specified search criteria in your specified search location.

In maps view, use the legend to change the maps display. Click edit to adjust:

  • The classification method (National means a sample of points throughout the US were used to determine the breakpoints, whereas Local means the sample used came from data points within the current view)
  • The number of categories (how many different colors will be used as fill colors in the map)
  • The outline color and thickness (for whichever scale you choose. i.e. county, state)
  • The color ranges (what interval each color will be assigned to)

To export your map, click export. Then crop (deselect "Lock Aspect Ratio" to crop manually). Click continue, then select whether you want a legend, scale bar, inset map, or north arrow. Feel free to move these items around and adjust the size to your liking. Click continue to see exporting options, and complete the export.

Tables can be exported as Excel spreadsheets, CSVs, or DBFs, and can be emailed to you or downloaded directly.

One helpful tool that can be used in several of the table views is filtering. To filter simply click filtering when available, select the data variable, and specify how you'd like to filter it. The following example shows how to use the ranking table to find the top 100 cities in LA County by income with educational attainment of less than 50%.

  • To delete a project, go to Project Settings --> General Settings, and then click Delete Project at the bottom of the page
  • For more information on using SimplyAnalytics, visit the SimplyAnalytics Help Document
  • Note: if you sign in as a guest, your projects will not be saved
  • Note: SimplyAnalytics must be accessed from campus or using a VPN.