Preliminaries:
In your web browser, navigate to: https://www.eia.gov/maps/layer_info-m.php. Once there, download these two shapefiles: Petroleum Product Pipelines and Natural Gas Interstate and Intrastate Pipelines.
These come as zipped directories, which you should unzip after downloading. You will be using the information in these files below.
0) Load the American Community Survey (ACS), and Show how you loaded the 2019 ACS 5-year average census tract data on Race and Hispanic/Latino ethnicity for the following Colorado counties: Denver, Boulder, Arapahoe, Adams, Jefferson, Broomfield, and Douglas.
1) Show how you calculate the proportion Black/African-American and proportion Hispanic in each census tract. Display these proportions for the first ten census tracts.
2) Show how you remove the race/ethnicity-specific estimate and margin of error columns. Display the first ten rows of the sf object before and after removing these two columns.
3) Show how you calculate the area and population density of each tract. Display the first ten rows of these two columns.
4) Show how you subset the tract data to retain only tracts with population density above 1000 per square MILE. These are considered “urban” tracts. Display the number of rows of the sf object before and after you subset.
5) Show how you delete the original census tract data and free up space in your computer’s memory/RAM.
6) Show how you find the bounding box around the urban tracts.
7) Show how you cut down the two pipeline data sets to the area of the bounding box. Display the number of rows of the two pipeline sf objects before and after subsetting.
8) Show how you calculate the number of petroleum product pipelines that overlap each urban tract (hint: you may need to use the rowSums() function). Display the top ten rows of this sf object column.
9) Show how you calculate the number of natural gas pipelines that overlap each urban tract (hint: you may need to use the rowSums() function). Display the top ten rows of this sf object column.
10) Show how you calculate the total length of petroleum product pipelines in each urban tract. Display the top ten rows of this sf object column.
11) Show how you calculate the total length of natural gas pipelines in each urban tract. Display the top ten rows of this sf object column.
12) Show how you combine the pipeline count and length data with the race/ethnicity proportion data (hint: make sure you don’t drop any urban tracts). Show the top ten rows of the merged sf object.
13) Show how you save and then reload this combined data set, including the tract geometry.
14) Show how you use ggplot2 to create point plots of pipeline counts/lengths vs race/ethnicity proportions (8 plots in all). Include a best-fit linear regression line in each plot. Display the plot.
15) Show how you regress petroleum product pipeline length in urban tracts against proportion Black/African-American and proportion Hispanic controlling for tract area, and show the results including p-values and confidence intervals (this should be a single regression model that includes three predictor variables). Explain your interpretation of the results.
16) Show how you regress natural gas pipeline length in urban tracts against proportion Black/African-American and proportion Hispanic controlling for tract area, and show the results including p-values and confidence intervals (this should be a single regression model that includes three predictor variables). Explain your interpretation of the results.
Sample Solution
Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell.
In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.
God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.
Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.
To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.
References
Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.
Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.
Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.
