Introducing the case study

During the 2020 US presidential election, the world and America alike were reminded that where an individual lives can best predict what they will decide for their future (that is, how they vote). This may be a sobering realization at an individual level, but this is a billion-dollar understanding for national businesses such as Starbucks, Walmart, and Amazon. Furthermore, for federal, state, and local politicians, this realization can be monumentally useful both at election time and when drafting legislation.

All these benefits may be available to these entities if they are capable of doing meaningful locational analyses of groups of people. In this case study, we are going to analyze the differences and the similarities between US counties. In the following screenshot, we can see that the US has many counties; there are 3,006, to be exact. The color-coded map shows the county-level relative population density:

Figure 17.1 –...