Assignment 3

"a picture is worth a thousand words"

Modern technology is wonderful.  You now have the ability to do in seconds what would have taken me hours to do not so many years ago.  To convince yourself that you can translate a picture (graph) into a story, I would like you to graph one economic variable which you can choose from the list at the Economic Time Series page.   For example what if you wanted to look at the unemployment rate.  You would go the the Federal Reserve, St. Louis and then choose US Employment Data.  Once there you can pull up the Unemployment Rate and you will follow the directions to construct a graph of the unemployment rate by selecting GIF chart of this data.  You will get the following graph (or something close to it since it will continually change). 

If you then follow directions and direct it to create a graph showing the unemployment rate since 1948 you get the following diagram.

You should pick one of the variables which you have a basic understanding of and then graph it and explain in a paragraph what you see in the graph.   A REALLY neat map of unemployment that can be found at this site.  Good luck.   (Please be sure to staple the graph to a typed paragraph - or integrate them into one document).