i always have hated thesis, and that is never menitoned by profs as why i get lower grades

When submitting an academic paper, it is usually advisable to frame the purpose of your paper as a thesis to be proven; for example, “In this paper, I shall show that non-manufacturing employment in Franklin County was the principal reason that Franklin County outperformed the State as a whole in economic growth.” You certainly showed by your numbers that Franklin County did outperform the State, but you did not state that as your goal.

You might have impressed them by looking at the GDP and poverty level figures and determining whether there are any anomalies caused by the way those figures are determined by the Federal Government. “Poverty level” in particular, while couched in mathematical language, is actually quite subjective as an indicator of poverty. For that matter, all economic indicators are potentially suspect and must be used with care (and usually aren’t in the popular media), because they arbitrarily combine observations to create a formula which must remain consistent from one period to the next, even though the observations that went into that formula might no longer be valid. An example of this is the consumer price index, which is based on a set of products purchased in a “typical” household. Well, what we buy at the store in 2010 isn’t the same as what we bought in 1960. What people buy in inner-city Columbus isn’t the same as what people buy in rural Vinton County. There are similarities, of course; but the differences affect the comparability of the figures.

However, as I commented earlier, it is still an interesting and useful report.

got a b-

Harold