Q: I am having trouble with Part 1 Question 3. The answer I reached is not one of the 4 possible options listed. I summarized the data layer E911_step2, field SkiNearFID and case field SkiNearFID with count as the case field statistic. I also tried summarizing SkiNearFID with SkiNearDist as the field and SkiNearFID as the case field. Both approaches produced a SkiNearFID of 5 as most commonly occurring. When matched to the object ID of 5 in SkiLift_step1, the corresponding lift is not one of the possible answers to the question. Where am I going wrong? Any ideas? Thanks.
A1 Student Response: (1) go to E911_step2 attribute table (2) right click on SkiNearFID field > summarize (3) enter SkiNearDist as the statistics field (4) choose count as the statistic (5) click run (6) open summary table generated in Contents (7) locate count field generated by summary operation (COUNT_SkiNearDist for me) and sort field descending (8) the highest number was 978 (9) I moved left in the table to determine the SkiNearFID for that count which was 20 (10) then I opened the attribute table for SkiLifts_step1 layer (11) browsed to ObjectID_1* field at the beginning of the chart and scrolled down to the value 20 (12) and for the ObjectID_1* of “20”, the corresponding lift name was the Sunshine Double.
A2 Instructor Response: One other thing to point out here is that the attribute you choose to “count” does not really matter. The important parameter here is the Case Field (in this case the SkiNearFID attribute). As long as you set the right case field, the count of any other attribute will be the same.
A3 Instructor Response: The ESITEID will work, but so too should any other attribute as long as the statistic you’re computing is COUNT and the Case Field is set to SkiNearFID. Not so if you’re computing other statistical summary values (e.g. sum, mean, max). In this case, the software simply counts all the records with the same grouping variable.
Q: I struggled with part 3. I completed it twice and came up with very similar, but wrong looking E911_step5 raster. I pulled out all the troubleshooting I could think of, but am still unsure where I went wrong with that raster. It still seemed to have the issue of only having dwelling points on it that we were trying to rectify using the Null and Con functions. Any pointers to troubleshoot your way out of in part 3?
A: As long as the white space you see isn’t all No Data, then you should be good to go. Sometimes it’s just a matter of changing the Symbology to make it look more “normal”.