A geographical question
A necessary warning
No score in this lab measures who is “truly Minnesotan.”
01
Prediction
What do you expect before changing the map?
Choose the claim that seems most plausible. Keep it in mind while the evidence refuses to sit still.
02
Mapping culture regions
Change the trait; change the region
Each circle is a selected Upper Midwest place. Size and color show the strength of the current layer in a simplified teaching dataset. Click a place to inspect it.
The state outline and city positions follow real geography at a simplified classroom scale. Circles are not territorial boundaries, and values are standardized teaching indicators rather than official cultural scores.
03
Culture traits of a subregion
Build your own cultural region
Select two or three traits and set the evidence threshold. Then watch your region cross a political border, develop holes, or split into islands.
Places included—
Across state line—
Separate clusters—
04
Regional imagery
Design the cover of “Minnesota”
Choose exactly four images for a hypothetical textbook cover. This is not decoration: what you select becomes a quiet definition of the region.
0/4images selected
Your regional image is still blank.
Choose four. The audit will look for what your cover foregrounds and what it leaves outside the frame.
05
Regional verdict
What did the map actually prove?
A cultural-region map can be accurate about its evidence and still misleading about the complexity of culture.
Exit prompt
Define one Minnesota cultural subregion.
Name the traits you used, describe where its boundary becomes uncertain, and identify one community or cultural history your definition risks obscuring.
Notes in this activity are temporary. Copy any work you need, and submit assigned responses in Canvas or D2L.
Data notes and sources
This is a simplified exploratory model, not a cultural-authenticity index. Its standardized place scores synthesize broad patterns in landscape, settlement history, urban networks, industry, and contemporary migration so students can test how criteria create boundaries. They should not be cited as official statistics.
Background sources: Minnesota State Demographic Center, Immigration & Language and Greater Minnesota: Refined & Revisited; U.S. Census Bureau, Language Use Data and Cartographic Boundary Files; State of Minnesota, Tribal Nations in Minnesota; Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation, regional economic mission.
Indigenous markers signify the approximate locations of Minnesota's seven Anishinaabe reservations and four Dakota communities. Tribal Nations are sovereign political entities, not merely another demographic “culture trait,” so they are displayed as their own layer and excluded from the scoring formula.