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Exercise Schedule
One learns computer applications not by reading or listening to lectures, but by doing. The "green book" is basically a 600 page walk-you-through-it-tutorial. The thing is, though, YOU have to do the walking through. And what I've found over the years is that the most effective walking through is done under a fairly rigid temporal discipline (under the guidance of the zen master or the drill sergeant, which ever works better for you).
Below is a suggested schedule for completing the exercises in this book. You will not turn in the results of these exercises, but you will be responsible for keeping a log of when you do them (and how many times you do them — repetition is strongly advised). The evidence that you have done them will lie entirely in the competence with which you fly the software. It will be deadly obvious.
As mentioned in the syllabus, the best way to approach this stuff is to realize (1) that sheer hours in front of the software is the biggest predictor of success, and (2) that repetitition (see below) and frequency (better many 1-2 hour sessions per week than a few longer ones) are the next best predictors. Thus, just dive in and power through these. Don't waste emotional energy memorizing steps or time writing down commands. This is about training mental muscle memory and mouse-clicking memory and getting a sense of how things fit together. You should expect to repeat some or all of these exercises (and at least parts of all of them) multiple times.
The learning goal is not just to get through the exercises and say you did. It is to learn how to do EVERYTHING contained in them.
You are free to devise your own schedule as long as you hit the milestones suggested by this schedule and listed in the course syllabus.
| Exercise 3b Navigating a map | |
| Tu 30 Aug | Exercise 3c Looking at feature attributes |
Chapter 4: Exploring ArcCatalog |
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| Exercise 4a Browsing map data | |
| Exercise 4b Searching for map data | |
| Th 1 Sept | Exercise 4c Adding data to ArcMap |
Section 3: Displaying data |
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Chapter 5: Symbolizing features and rasters |
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| Exercise 5a Changing symbology | |
| Exercise 5b Symbolizing features by categorical attributes <br> | |
| Exercise 5c Using styles and creating layer files | |
| Tu 6 Sept | Exercise 5d Symbolizing rasters |
Chapter 6: Classifying features and rasters |
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| Exercise 6a Classifying features by standard methods | |
| Exercise 6b Classifying features manually | |
| Exercise 6c Mapping density | |
| Tu 13 Sept | Exercise 6d Using graduated and chart symbols |
| Th 15 Sept |
EXAM |
Chapter 7: Labeling features |
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| Exercise 7a Using dynamic labels | |
| Exercise 7b Setting rules for placing labels | |
| Exercise 7c Using interactive labels and creating annotation | |
Section 4: Getting information about features |
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Chapter 8: Querying data |
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| Exercise 8a Identifying, selecting, finding, and hyperlinking features | |
| Exercise 8b Selecting features by attribute | |
| Tu 20 Sept | Exercise 8c Creating reports |
Chapter 9: Joining and relating tables
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| Exercise 9a Joining tables | |
| Th 22 Sept | Exercise 9b Relating tables |
Section 6: Creating and editing data |
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Chapter 14 Building geodatabases |
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| Exercise 14a Creating a personal geodatabase | |
| Exercise 14b Creating feature classes | |
| Tu 27 Sept | Exercise 14c Adding fields and domains |
Chapter 15: Creating features |
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| Exercise 15a Drawing features | |
| Th 29 Sept | Exercise 15b Using feature construction tools |
Chapter 16: Editing features and attributes</td> |
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| Exercise 16a Deleting and modifying features | |
| Exercise 16b Splitting and merging features | |
| Tu 4 Oct | Exercise 16c Editing feature attribute values |
Chapter 17: Geocoding addresses |
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| Exercise 17a Creating an address locator | |
| Exercise 17b Matching addresses | |
| Th 6 Oct | Exercise 17c Rematching addresses |
Section 5: Analyzing feature relationships |
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Chapter 10: Selecting features by location |
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| Exercise 10a Using location queries | |
| Th 13 Oct | Exercise 10b Combining attribute and location queries |
| EXAM | |
Chapter 11: Preparing data for analysis |
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| Exercise 11a Dissolving features | |
| Exercise 11b Creating graphs | |
| Exercise 11c Clipping layers | |
| Th 20 Oct | Exercise 11d Exporting data (<a |
Chapter 12: Analyzing spatial data |
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| Exercise 12a Buffering features | |
| Exercise 12b Overlaying data | |
| Th 27 Oct | Exercise 12c Calculating attribute values |
Chapter 13 Projecting Data in ArcMap |
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| Exercise 13a Projecting data on the fly | |
| Th 3 Nov | Exercise 13b Defning a projection |
Section 7: Presenting data |
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Chapter 18: Making maps from templates |
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| Exercise 18a Opening a map template | |
| Exercise 18b Adding x,y data to a map | |
| Th 10 Nov | Exercise 18c Drawing graphics on a map |
Chapter 19: Making maps for presentation |
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| Exercise 19a Laying out the page | |
| Exercise 19b Adding a title | |
| Exercise 19c Adding a north arrow, scale bar, and legend | |
| Th 17 Nov | Exercise 19d Adding final touches and setting print options |
| EXAM | |
Section 8: Modeling |
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Chapter 20: Creating models |
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| Exercise 20a Starting a model | |
| Exercise 20b Building a model | |
| Exercise 20c Enhancing a model |
