I was able to do steps 1-4 with ease, and by the end I had just my state and the counties individually outlined without the rest of the country when counties is checked
I made my projection NAD 1983 Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Albers
DBF / Dbase file- a way that the computer stores the numbers in the attribute tables
Select by Attributes- allows yu to sleect features on a given layer
Query- lets you retrive individual features from a layer
Fields (in a Table)- a colum in a table that stores values
Records (in a Table)- table that recording population information
Attributes- nonspatial information about a geographic feature
Relational Database- a structure for storing and managing information on arcGIS
Join function- joins a table view to a layer
Calculate / Field Calculator- when typed in years will calculate differences in population numbers in the attribute table
