# Mapping Apps

[Make a Map](http://mapapps.esri.com/create-map/index.html) is a website that lets you create your own maps of the US and areas thereof using various demographics data. It’s still in beta stage but it’s got all of the US and so far has datasets for median household income, population change 2000-9, population density, median home value, unemployment rate, average household size and median age. The sitemaker, <span class="caps">ESRI</span> (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.), also has a pretty good free globe map software, [ArcGIS Explorer](http://www.esri.com/software/mapping_for_everyone/explorer/index.html), for which you download map layers and add-ins. ArcGIS has been used for several years now by the U.S. Census.

Other (non-<span class="caps">ESRI</span>) mapping alternatives:

[GeoCommons](http://geocommons.com/) | [MapBox](http://mapbox.com/) | <a>Geoda</a> | [<span class="caps">QGIS</span>](http://www.qgis.org/) | [Maps Geek](http://www.mapsgeek.com/) | [Tableau Public](http://www.tableausoftware.com/public//) | [Polymaps](http://polymaps.org/) | [Needle](http://needlebase.com/) | [Leaflet](http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/features.html)

[10 Free Tools For Creating Your Own Maps](http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/map-tools/)

To help students get started, here is a list of research-quality data sets:

[Data Sets](https://bitly.com/bundles/hmason/1)