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Data set Review – Trace Trettenero

March 19, 2026 / ttrette

After scanning the data set on the St. Louis, MO Monthly and Seasonal Mean Temperature set I was provided, I had to do a little digging. This data set seems to have came from the NOAA, who are responsible for collecting and analyzing climate data and environment data. After making sure that this administration is highly credible I also learned that they do these surveys of the environment to this day consistently. Though they are responsible for the data set presented the data probably comes from a long standing weather station in the St. Louis area with the proper tools and instruments to record the data.

The purpose of compiling this data set is to track the temperature trends over time and provide insight into St. Louis’s long term weather patterns. The data could be used to monitor the environment by scientists and researchers. Or to relate it to my area of interest it could be used by investors for urban planning.

The data is presented in a table format with columns and rows. When referring to structure I think this table achieves its purpose in presenting the data clearly and plainly. It shows the yearly data broken down into monthly averages and seasonal averages. The organization makes it useful to identify weather trends over the decades. However, because it only tracks averages, the data does not represent outliers like the weather phenomena we are experiencing this week (3/19). This could cause an issue and makes the data less reliable.

The methods to “clean” this data aren’t mentioned in the PDF provided, but following my NOAA statement made prior; the NOAA typically applies many procedures to ensure the consistency and quality of the data. Some effects to the data may still be present, things like weather tracking technology and station location. Another that came to mind was the slimming size of St. Louis since they began to conduct these weather surveys, I wonder if it could have gotten colder because there is less population? Surely there is less foot traffic, construction, etc…

The creator’s goals likely focused on long term averages and effects rather than short term effects. This could unintentionally downplay odd short term weather events and phenomena, especially in recent memory.

I think that the data set would be most useful to predict future weather patterns. Visualizations like charts or graphs representing the most large changes, this could also prove useful to provide insights into the growing climate change concern.

Looking at Communities with Voyant

March 18, 2026 / ikoupep

Texts I Used

For this assignment, I compared two Wikipedia articles: one about St. Louis, Missouri, and one about Edwardsville, Illinois. These two places are close to each other, but they are pretty different in size and lifestyle. St. Louis is a big city, while Edwardsville is smaller and more of a college town.

My Question

I wanted to see how the way people write about a big city is different from how they write about a smaller town nearby.

My Hypothesis

Before using Voyant, I thought the two texts would focus on different things. I expected:

St. Louis would talk more about population, economy, history, and big city features
Edwardsville would focus more on community, students, and education

I also thought the St. Louis article would be more complex, while Edwardsville would be simpler and more focused.

What I Did

I put both texts into Voyant Tools and looked at things like the word cloud and word trends. This helped me see which words showed up the most and what each text focused on.

What I Found

First, the most common words were different in each text.

In the St. Louis article, there were a lot of words about the city itself, like population, river, and economy
In the Edwardsville article, words like “university,” “students,” and “community” showed up a lot

One big thing I noticed is how important Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is in the Edwardsville article. It comes up a lot and seems to be a big part of how the town is described.

Also, the St. Louis article covered way more topics, like transportation, history, and business. Edwardsville stayed more focused on local life and education.

Conclusion

My hypothesis was mostly right. The two places are described very differently, even though they are close to each other. St. Louis is shown as a big, complex city, while Edwardsville is more about community and college life.

Using Voyant made it easier to see these differences because it shows patterns in the words, not just the meaning of the text.

Final Thoughts

This activity helped me understand how different communities are described based on their size and role. It also showed me how useful tools like Voyant can be for quickly spotting patterns in writing.

Ioannis Koupepides

Lab 9: Visualizing Data with Palladio

March 18, 2026 / Margaret Smith

Palladio is a tool for visualizing and exploring data through maps, network charts, and categories. We’re going to begin by creating our own data set of immigration and migration data using the 1900 Census.

Working in a group, choose a census from this folder and add at least three lines apiece to the spreadsheet. (If you get stuck on handwriting, let me know and we can look at it together.
Together, we’ll put the data into Palladio and see what patterns emerge.

Data Set Review: Average Weekly Hours Worked in the St. Louis Area

March 17, 2026 / typhill

This dataset on average weekly hours worked by private employees in the St. Louis metropolitan area was made by Trading Economics, but the original data comes from government sources like the Federal Reserve’s FRED database and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. These organizations collect employment data through surveys and reports from businesses. The purpose of compiling this data is to help researchers, businesses, and policymakers understand labor trends and overall economic conditions. It has been used for economic research, forecasting, and news reporting. The dataset is available online in graph form and can also be downloaded as a spreadsheet.

The data itself is structured in a simple way, mainly focusing on the date and the average number of hours worked each week. This makes it useful for looking at trends over time, such as whether people are working more or fewer hours during certain months, years, and periods of time. However, because the dataset only focuses on averages, it does not show differences between industries, job types, or worker demographics. This could affect how the data is interpreted since part-time and full-time workers are included in the same average.

The creators mention that the data has been standardized and sometimes seasonally adjusted to make comparisons easier. While this helps make the data cleaner and more consistent, it may also hide unusual spikes or drops that could be important for understanding real economic changes. The goals of the organizations involved also shape the dataset. Government agencies focus on measurable indicators like hours worked because they are important for tracking employment and productivity. Trading Economics then decides how to present the data, which can influence what users focus on.

I would use this dataset to study economic trends in the St. Louis region, especially how working hours change during recessions or periods of growth. I would also look at why fewer hours are worked in certain months of the year vs others. Overall, the dataset is useful, but it should be used carefully because it simplifies complex labor patterns into one average number. It also doesn’t account for certain factors, like part-time vs full-time employees.

Voyant

March 15, 2026 / gokai

One thing that stood out to me in the Voyant visualization was how often the word river appeared in the St. Louis article. At first I didn’t think much of it, but it actually makes sense when you consider that St. Louis developed as a major port along the Mississippi River. The river has historically been central to the city’s economy and growth. In contrast, the Edwardsville article mentioned the word university much more often. This reflects how important Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is to the city’s identity, since the university plays a major role in the local community and economy. Overall, using Voyant helped me see patterns in the texts that I might not have noticed through close reading alone. The visualizations made it easier to identify which themes appear most frequently in descriptions of each city. At the same time, distant reading has its limits because word frequency alone does not explain the full meaning or context of the text. To fully understand how these communities are represented, distant reading works best when combined with closer analysis of specific passages. Even so, this exercise showed how digital tools like Voyant can provide a useful starting point for exploring how different places in the St. Louis region are described.

March 7, 2026 / naortiz

The podcasts approach about preserving black history is a crucial part of keeping that history alive for generations
Will digitalizing black history to keep it going affect the way people will decipher the main point of it?
Should the involvement of Smithsonian with all their resources be a standard for other cities to follow along?
What counts as “history” and how do we know whether it is worth the energy and time of preservation?
“Whether it’s your grandma doing oral history, or it’s a high-school graduation on VHS” – this quote signifies the importance of history no matter who is preaching about it, but the main concept is keeping it alive.

Project Proposal

March 7, 2026 / naortiz

What I choose as the focus of my project is the popular graffiti spots in St. Louis. I am a big fan of art especially graffiti, growing up on the Southside of Chicago where many buildings are covered with graffiti, it made me fall in love with that particular art. Ever since then I have always loved the uniqueness of every artistic piece, though some where related to gang violence, many other pieces where just an expression of art and extremely beautiful. What is important to me is the preservation of that beautiful art and the story it conveys about the artist.

The problem that arises from my observation is the negative stereotype graffiti gets for its effect on adolescence. It is often spoken how graffiti influences adolescence to turn to a violent lifestyle to fit it, because it is often associated with gang violence. It is looked upon as vandalism and criminal instead of expression and creativeness. The Mural Mile in St. Louis is a mile long wall filled entirely with graffiti of a variety of talented artist. This type of art is a way for people to connect with others within their community and culture. Not only is this a very popular locations but there is a multiple of graffiti location all around St. Louis.

My approach for this is a story map, to present the various popular graffiti spots in St. Louis, and to analyze whether the art is a showcase of expression or violence. In addition to whether these drawings bring negative impacts or positive ones to the community and influence the young minds within.

Primary Source: A piece from the Mural Mile https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53730949104_62b75d0d33_b.jpg

Secondary Source: Snelling, Grace. 2022. “Paint Louis celebrates 25 years of art and hip hop at the flood wall.” https://www.stlmag.com/culture/visual-arts/paint-louis-celebrates-25-years-of-art-and-hip-hop-at-the-flood-wall/

Project Proposal – Trace Trettenero

March 5, 2026 / ttrette

Growing up in the St. Louis area, breweries have always been a part of the city’s identity, even if I didn’t fully understand their history at first. You see references to beer everywhere around here, from historic brick buildings to local spots who brew beer and not to mention the massive Anheuser-Busch presence. What drew my attention to this topic was realizing that brewing in St. Louis doesn’t just have to be about beer, but rather immigration and culture. Even the development of the city itself! Many of the breweries were started by German immigrants from what I’ve gathered, transforming STL into one of the most important brewing centers in the united states. Learning about the mass influence something as simple as beer has on entire neighborhoods and community interested me in this topic and curious about how the industry shaped St. Louis’s history and identity.

I aim to answer how brewing influenced the economic and cultural development of St. Louis, and how the city become one of the most important brewing centers in the United States during the nineteenth century.

I want to approach the history of brewing in St. Louis through the lens of immigration and urban development. My project will examine how immigrants influenced larger brewing traditions and how technological innovation and geographic advantages helped breweries expand nationally. I will take into consideration how events such as the Prohibition dramatically changed the industry and led to a cultural decline too.

Sources I will likely use:

https://shsmo.org a primary source with image proof attached

St. Louis Brews: The History of Brewing in the Gateway City by Herbst, Roussin, Kious a book that seems very informative, a digitized version will be used

Lastly, I plan to create an interactive timeline showing brewery development in the St. Louis area from the early 1800s to today. Im considering using tools used in class to organize this timeline. It would show key events in places like Soulard and Benton to help convey that brewing helped shape St. Louis.

Voyant Corpus – Trace Trettenero

March 5, 2026 / ttrette

Today, I wanted to compare my hometown, Staunton IL, to St. Louis MO. I have hypothesized that they will have a historical tie to one another since Staunton is withing the greater STL area and I will be looking for those ties with the Voyant tools provided.

During this brief research I compared news paper websites of both Staunton and St. Louis respectively.

Above is a representation of the data I was presented with while comparing the two. I think that the website main words consisting of Staunton and Louis fails to confirm my hypothesis, and it may be a lack of historical data being presented in newspapers. Still, this does not discredit the regional influence that St. Louis has over the whole metropolitan area.

Sites Used:

https://www.stauntonstartimes.com

https://www.stltoday.com/go./?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=18338231165&gbraid=0AAAAACF126c4jOvWE52nHVeZzoa_dRIcF&gclid=Cj0KCQiA8KTNBhD_ARIsAOvp6DLT0vMHVpIahGfvH75e7HohGTyMwdgGsmBMufPOcHRqJfdET6yR_D0aAgcHEALw_wcB

https://voyant-tools.org/?corpus=6068ce7b3bfffd53b835604a3d3ea6e4

Project Proposal – The Departure of the Saint Louis Rams…

March 4, 2026 / wmathis

The Departure of the Saint Louis Rams and the fallout that ensued.

The then Saint Louis Rams and now Los Angeles Rams departed Saint Louis in 2016. This at it’s core is sad for any football fan, but the problems arising from the abrupt exit just may be more far reaching than expected. The breakup led to a 760 billion dollar payout to the city of Saint Louis. Great news for the people, $760 Billion allows for a lot of rejuvenation and programs for the citizens. What if I told you that as of 2025, that money has not left the interest baring account it was placed in. That raises the question why has money just sat in an account for a decade when it was intended to be used for the city and its citizens? Crime has risen in the Metro East since the Rams departure, businesses have left or closed, and tourism has surely been affected with no NFL fans needing to travel to see the Rams play. More importantly I was robbed of a chance to see The Kansas City Chiefs play for a price I could afford and on a regular basis but we will circle back to that fact.

The official website for Saint Louis has been tracking this settlement issue since the beginning https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/mayor/rams-settlement.cfm. Explore Saint Louis talks about tourism, but the question remain. If the money had been used in a more timely fashion, what would the city look like now (https://explorestlouis.com/press-release/st-louis-tourism-reaches-new-heights-record-growth-in-visitors-hotel-industry-and-meetings-sector/)?

I plan to use the leaflet story map and an attempt at a take on “The New Colossus” to add information to my project. These items will include the use of charts and graphs to show the impact of losing the Rams and moreover the indecisiveness of appropriating the funds from the settlement.