Ashley's Human Geo Blog

Today in human geography we talked about a lot of different stuff. First we finished the population stats video with the Swedish guy. Then we talked about how although the United States is doing very well on average, we still have poverty in many places. We started discussing if richer people should share their wealth with people with less money. I don't want to sound rude or arrogant or anything like that, but I was so disheartened to see so many peoples hands go up when Mr. Schick asked if rich people shouldn't share their wealth. I just don't understand. The only difference between people like us and people that live on the streets is the amount of money we have in our banks. We all deserve the same opportunities. Anyways, we somehow got onto the topic of the relationship between the United States and North Korea. Right now, it isn't the great. In fact, North Korea is (presumed) to be currently successfully testing out nuclear missiles that could reach the United Sta...

Today in human geography we watched a few videos on population pyramids. The first one, which was a TED educational video explained what a population pyramid was and why it was important. Population pyramids can be used to predict the future of a country which can be used to allow leaders to make important decisions for the country. For example, China's population was growing very rapidly and it was already enormous enough so the Chinese government implemented ZPG which lowered the growth rate of China's people. This ultimately helped the country as overpopulation can cause many problems like food shortages. We also talked a bit about industrialization and how a country is either pre industriziled, industrialized or post industrialized. Also how humans have progressed very much in the past few hundred years, as our technology has greatly improved and our population has skyrocketed in a relatively short time. I think this is kind of interesting because it makes me question the f...

Today in human geography we got our tests back and discussed them. I am glad I got a 100. I can see why I got the question I got wrong was wrong. Thankfully I got the extra credit right so it equalized the question I got wrong. The test average for the class was pretty high. Everybody in the class pretty much either got a one hundred or higher or at least a 90. The test was pretty easy in my opinion so I guess I kinda expected a lot of people (myself included!) to do pretty well. We talked about exams for a little bit towards the end of class. Our test will be a part of the things we have to study for exams. We didn't really do anything else after that.

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Today in human geography we took the test. Ms. Collins was our sub. It was actually easier then I thought it would be. The front page part was one of the things I worried about but there was actually plenty of time and it was easy. There were a few questions that were a little confusing but other then that it was fine. I think I did pretty well on it.

Today in human geography, we went over what would be on the test. We have to know how to navigate the World Facebook and also how to get the net migration rate and a bunch of other stuff. I think I will do well on this test. We supposedly have 15 minutes to answer questions that the answers could all be found on the World Facebook. We had a class contest to see who could look up the answers to a bunch of different questions the fastest. Most people got the answers within at least 10 seconds. I think it was kind of clever to have part of the test formatted to have all the answers on a website yet have it to be timed.

Today in human geography, more people presented their projects. Again it was interesting to see the different stats for each country and why it was like that. Also to see how people ranked their world hunger fighting organizations. A lot of them that had similar organizations were ranked in a some what similar order. We talked about UNICEF and what it stands for for a bit. Other then that nothing else happened.

Today in human geography, people presented their projects. It was interesting to see the different age structures and stats in the population pyramids for each country. It really goes to show how different each country is, and how many factors play into the conditions of a country. We also talked about how charities are examined and determined if they are efficient and honest or not. Not much happened other then that, it was a particularly uneventful class.

I wasn't in class today. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uwn5-diuRcwQpo_-Adqa0x2ORGxc3oDZuHJITlT7faI/edit#

Today in human geography there was a quiz that I was totally unprepared for. However, despite my not so great grade, I found this quiz beneficial. It made me realize what I needed to work on and study more. Also how much of the information I actually retained. In the second half of human geography we were assigned a report about two different countries. We could do the left or right side. For the left option, we could get B and not have to do as much work. For the right side, we could get an A but do more work. Obviously, it would be better to do the right side. However, I do appreciate Mr. Schick's sense of humor. For the assignment, we were to answer a set of specific questions that a population pyramid can answer. I decided to do Maldives and Japan. They are radically different countries, with radically different populations. One is an island resort type of place, the other is an extremely technologically advanced place with an aging population. For the second part of the projec...

Today in human geography we talked more about population pyramids. There are 3 shapes of population pyramids, a Christmas tree shape, a square and a cup. A Christmas tree shaped pyramid means that growth rates are slow, there is a high birth rate, and a short life expectancy. An example of  a country with this kind of shape in its population pyramid would be Bangladesh. A box shape would mean there is a low infant mortality rate, there is a slow population growth, and a long life expectancy. An example of this shape would be the United States. A cup shape would mean there is a low birth rate, a shrinking population and long life expectancy. An example of this would be Japan.

In human geography, we talked about Total Fertility Rate. For example, Nigeria's TFR is almost 7 which would mean the population would be skyrocketing. However, due to other factors such as the prevalence of AIDS in the country the population doesn't increase as much. We also discussed population pyramids which are a type of bar graph that is basically two bar graphs vertically placed next to each other to show the difference between the two. We viewed a few, one I remember was one of the female and male ages population in Japan. I noticed two things, the female stats were generally larger and the second was that people in the 60 year old range were the largest age group. This is interesting, considering most times, you'd think the it would be more the 30-40 year old range.

Today in human geography class, we talked about total fertility rate(TFR). It is the average number of children to born per woman. For a population to increase,the TFR would need to be 2.1 or higher. If the TFR is lower then 2.1 the population will decrease. The world TFR is currently 2.42, however, last year it was 2.47. This means the population in decreasing. This is because factors like birth control is becoming more available to different parts of the world. Nigeria is a developing nation, the TFR is 6.89. However, even though this is such a high rate, AIDS is very prevalent in this area which kills many children. The United States TFR is 2.01, which is supposed to mean the population is dropping by a good amount, however, due to immigrants from other countries the rate at which the population is decreasing is changed. Japan's TFR is 1.40, which is way below 2.1. The population is decreasing a lot.