Geographic Information Systems have both potential and pitfalls.  One of the great aspects of GIS, and in particular ArcGIS, is that it can be precise with information.  For instance, on the airport map, the user can zoom in far enough to see if Northwestern Prep is within or not within the noise contour.  The ArcGIS is also precise with the parcel boundaries and the land use boundaries.  GIS allows for the precision of information that cannot be obtained without using computers.

                GIS also allows for the efficient synthesizing of data.  This is in part due to the fact that ArcGIS can hold lots of pieces of data: population counts, parcel boundaries, land use patterns, school names, arterial locations etc.  Such large volumes of data would be difficult to store with computer software.  What gives GIS so much potential, however, is that it can combine data sets with almost no effort.  For instance, the user can create a map of population density easily by combining the population-per-parcel table with the area-per-parcel table.  Such a calculation would be painfully tedious and easy to mess up without software.

                GIS does have some problems, though.  The first is that it is prone to user error.  The ArcGIS software is complicated, with many different toolbars and buttons.  It can be easy for a neo-geographer to get lost in all of the controls, even when using a tutorial.  He or she can easily spend more time and effort trying to figure out how to use the software than trying to analyze the geographic data.  In this sense, GIS software can be a potential distraction to the user if their task is simple.

                Lastly, GIS software helps the user organize the data, but it does not provide analysis.  The user still must interpret all of the maps that he or she creates.  Perhaps, the greatest pitfall of GIS is that it can give the user so many tools to create maps that he or she forgets to interpret them.  At the end of the day, the most valuable skill a geographer can attain is the ability to use maps to make policy decisions (or other types of decisions.)  GIS cannot do this for the user; it is simply a tool to make the analysis easier.