1911 Census and Spreadsheets

      I decided this week that I would get straight to the assignment that's set for our next class rather than leaving it until last minute as always! I started working on the census at about half past twelve today and it's taken me three hours to muddle through it! I thought at first i must be doing it wrong because basically all I was doing was flicking over and back between the census information on the national archive website and the spreadsheet i was putting it into. Then i looked at the example we had been learning from in class today and mine looked fairly similar and I'm now quite proud that I have something to show before the weekend comes!
      The layout of my spreadsheet is a little different to what we looked at today because the blank forms on blackboard list the colums in a different order (I didn't realise this until I was half way through and was afraid to go tampering with them incase I lost the work I had just done). I also forgot to bring my usb key to the library so I'm just hoping the email I sent myself with it as an attachment is the right format for my computer at home!
      Anyway now for the technical bit. I looked at three areas of Ballymodan, Co Cork; Corravreeda West, Garranbeg and Knockanreagh. I got a little bit stuck calculating the mode and the median. I'm managed to throw up some figures, not sure if they're right but I'll give it another look later in the week.
      The results that struck me the most about the six house I looked at were that there were only two families in which both parents were still alive. The most common situation was that a widowed father was looking after the children and the farm with the help of two or three servants. Five of the houses in question were landowning farmers and the remaining family also worked on a farm though they did not own it. I also noticed that for the Cogan and Buckley families, the occupation of the eldest child was either farmer's son or farmers daughter and nothing else.
      These are just some of the things i noticed at a glance so I hope to edit this post later when I've thought about them more thoroughly.