John Carroll Human Geography

In class, we watched a video by Swedish global health teacher Hans Rosling. Rosling used visualization to show the difference by nation in life expectancy and GDP per capita between 1810 and 2009, when the video was made. In 1810, life expectancy was below age 40 worldwide, and GDP per capita was below $400 worldwide, but this didn't take inflation into consideration. As time progressed, western, particularly European, nations had a significant increase in GDP per capita because of the industrial revolution. The better economies led to better healthcare, and longer lifespans in these nations. Meanwhile, colonized countries in Asia and Africa were doing poorly both in life expectancy and GDP per capita because they were not impacted by the industrial revolution. In the video, we saw how WWI and the Spanish Flu epidemic impacted the world's population as nations all over the world had great decreases in the life expectancy. Seeing these countries recover and come back stronge

Today we discussed population pyramids, a way to measure population while taking aspects like age and gender into consideration. In a population pyramid, men are on the left, women are on the right, the youngest are on the bottom and the oldest are on the top. The ages are separated into 5-year increments and grouped into pre-reproductive (0-14), reproductive (15-44) and post-reproductive (45-100+). We can predict future population trends by looking at the base of the pyramid. A large base points toward population increase, and a small base points toward a population decrease. Pre-industrialized countries tend to have larger populations because of the lack of availability of birth control, while developed countries tend to have steady population numbers or population decrease as people put off having children for later years or simply never have children. Pre-industrialized countries also usually don't have highways, great schools, or airports. This is because most of the state

We received our graded tests and looked over the answers and questions to understand why we scored what we did. I received a 92, and got both the bonus questions correct, so overall I'm happy with my grade and proud of how I scored, but I'm disappointed that I got certain questions wrong. Looking back, some answers were obvious and I still got them wrong. I'll study harder next time so I can get a higher score that I'm really proud of. Im content with a 92 though, since my human geography grade is still an A.

We took our test on population and settlement today, and had to answer questions regarding population, immigration and emigration, GDP per capita, and military expenditures. We had the first 20 minutes to use the CIA Factbook and answer 15 questions, then we did matching vocabulary terms such as crude birth rate, crude death rate, and infant mortality rate. I studied pretty hard for this test, and I think I did well. Im proud of myself for putting effort into the test, and I hope my grade reflects that. There were parts of the test that were difficult though, including answering all the CIA Factbook questions in time, and figuring out definitions, but I still think I did okay on them. The extra credit questions were confusing, and I guessed for the second one. I don't know if I got either of them right, but I hope that I did.

Today in class, we looked over the test and the things we'll need to know. Our test is on Friday (my birthday yay) and I think I've studied enough that I'll be prepared to take it then. The first 15 questions o the test require us to use CIA Factbook I still need to practice using the website because I'm pretty slow when it comes to navigating the website to answer questions about specific countries. The rest of the test has questions about push and pull factors for immigration and emigration, birth rate, death rate, and other things like population, life expectancy, and GDP per capita. Overall though, I believe that I'm fairly well prepared for our test, and I'm eager to take it.

1) The population of China is 1,384,688,986. The population of India is 1,296,834. 2) The total fertility rate in Japan is 1.42. 3) The death rate in El Salvador is 5.8 deaths/ 1,000 population. 4) 23-28% of the French identify "none" as their religion. This statistic is not verifiable because France has not officially collected data on religion since 1872. 5) 82.7% of Mexicans identify as Roman Catholic. 6) $5,988 is the GDP per capita in the United States. 7) $5,900 its the GDP per capita in Nigeria. 8) $105,100 is the GDP per capita in Luxembourg. 9) 76.2% of the population of the United States are internet users. 10) There are 1,218 airports in Russia, and 13,513 airports in the United States. 11) 1.201 billion do not have electricity. 12) The infant mortality rate in Canada is 4.5 deaths/ 1,000 births. The infant mortality rate of Cuba is 4.4 deaths/ 1,000 births. The infant mortality rate of the United States is 5.7 deaths/ 1,000 births. 13) The total litera

Due to an illness, I missed class today and cannot write a full blog post.

Today in class, we discussed crude birth rate, crude death rate, immigration and emigration. Crude birth rate is the number of births per 1000 population, and crude death rate is the number of deaths per 1000 population. When you subtract the crude death rate from the crude birth rate, you get the rate of natural increase, or RNI, which is the annual natural growth rate of a nation in percentage form. Then we got into net migration rate, which is the difference between the number of people leaving a countermand the number of people coming in to that same country during a year. An excess of people coming into a nation is net immigration, written as a positive number. An excess of people leaving a nation is net emigration, written as a negative number. People have push forces and pull forces for immigrating and emigrating. Push forces include civil war, environmental degradation, unemployment/ underemployment, and religious of ethnic persecution. Pull forces include better economic o

In class, we discussed life expectancy in different nations. We learnt that Monaco, a very wealthy island, has the highest life expectancy in the world. This is probably due to rich people being able to afford medicine and treatments for sickness, and are less prone to sickness in the first place because of their being able to afford clean conditions. The USA was around #45, which makes sense. Countries in war and with poor infrastructure, like Chad, were near the bottom. We also explored how women almost always have a higher life expectancy compared to men, which could be due to more men in the military, and more men doing dangerous jobs. This is most likely due to women getting turned down for more 'masculine' and therefore dangerous jobs, such as labor. Gender roles seem to take a role in this, because if men weren't taught that dangerous jobs were manly, and if women weren't taught that they were too fragile and weak to do anything dangerous, these numbers would pr

We got our tests back today and checked them. I got an 81%, and I'm happy with my score.  Also, everybody who took the test got a trick question wrong, so I don't feel that bad about getting that wrong. Also, at the beginning of class, we learnt about and discussed the traditions of spirit week, including the rules for getting taped. I personally think we should honor tradition and not take off the tape, but some people disagree. Also, we talked about how you couldn't tape upperclassman (freshman can't tape anyone, sophmores can tape freshman, juniors can tape freshman and sophomores, and seniors can tape everyone). A lot of people wore their class colors today, and I noticed that the older you get, the more effort you put into it. Very few freshman were wearing more white clothes than just their class shirt, while most of the seniors were entirely dressed in green. My sister, a senior, was wearing green glitter on her cheeks, green shorts, green socks, her green cla

Unfortunately, I went home early due to an illness, and cannot complete a blog post on today's class because I missed it.

We took our test today on cartography, parallels, meridians, and other subjects from this unit, and I think I did fairly well. I'm glad I studied for this.  Certain parts of the test were difficult, and I probably should've studied harder for these questions. It wasn't too difficult though, and I still think I'll be happy with the grade I receive on this test. Since I finished the test pretty early, I got to begin on my homework, and I now have much less than I would've had if I hadn't had this time.

At the beginning of class today, we realized we had a new student who transferred from a different class. Mr. Schick spent part of class setting up her blog and determining where she'd sit, but it wasn't too time-consuming. Then, we looked over information to prepare and study for our test tomorrow. I've studied the information and I think I'll do well on the test. I know the difference between longitude and latitude, and I know what the equator and Prime Meridian are, as well as the arctic and antarctic circles, and the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. I'm studying information on time zones and daylight savings right now too. Also, I learnt today that there are actually 39 time zones, because some places just kind of do their own thing when it comes to time. I also thought more about how some people want to get rid of time zones and just start using one. It seems like it'd make things like traveling to different time zones easier, but it might be confusing be

Today in class, we began by looking at people's blogs and the test questions they had written. Joi had a very polished blog post that looked like a real test. We looked at another blog with a map that had labels in French, and it reminded me of last year in French class, when we learned how to say different nationalities in French (Je suis Swisse= I am Swiss). We discussed the fact that the French word for map is carte, and how that connects to how cartography is the art and science of mapmaking. Then we took a pop quiz where we only had about 15 seconds to answer 10 multiple choice questions. I got a few wrong, but I think I did pretty well anyway. More importantly: today is Mean Girls day, because it's October 3rd (In reference to the scene with Cady and Aaron).

In class we looked at the difference between longitude and latitude, and started to look at different time zones. A time zone is a region of the globe that observes a uniform standard of time for legal, commercial, and social purposes. Time zones typically align with the boundaries of countries or states because it's convenient for areas in close commercial communication to follow the same time. Each band of longitude (meridians, not parallels) is a different time zone. More on longitude, it is the geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface. The lines run in a north-south direction, and measure how far away a point is from the prime meridian, which crosses through Greenwich, England, and is given the position of 0 degrees longitude. The lines of longitude cross the equator at right angles, are all equal in length, and meet at the north and south poles. The lines are closest to one another towards the poles, and farthest away f