This page was created to present charts showing trends for the composition of the 11-member Ann Arbor City Council since 1957 – the modern era of the Council.

The strategy for creating these charts was to start with the  membership table on the City Council Membership:  Modern Era ArborWiki page and to paste it into a Google Sheet. Tallies by row were calculated with the COUNTIF function on a separate page. For example, for analysis by political party, the COUNTIF function counted up the number of cells with a "(D)" or "(R)" or some other designation. A chart was then built from the COUNTIF sheet. 

The analysis of gender balance also started with the the  membership table on the City Council Membership:  Modern Era ArborWiki page and pasting it into a Google Sheet. The political party designations in parenthesis were then edited to show gender instead: (M) or (F). Editing was a group effort by participants in the Blogwarts I session – which was an event held as part of the Ann Arbor District Library Summer Game 2015. 

If you'd like to contribute to an effort to analyze the average age of the City Council over time, please edit City Council Membership: Annotated for DOB.