[acs-r] Table and variable names

[Ezra Haber Glenn]

Thanks for pointing this out.  In fact, these are the tables used by
the on-board acs.lookup function.  (When the acs package is installed,
these get added as well -- you can view access them with 

> system.file("extdata/acs_5yr_2010_var.xml.gz", package="acs")

and 

> system.file("extdata/acs_5yr_2011_var.xml.gz", package="acs")

The acs.lookup function uses some basic xml parser tricks, but as I
mentioned in the webinar, I'm not convinced it's the best tool for the
job.  There are just so so many census tables, many of which use the
same key words in different configurations.  My experience is that the
acs.lookup tool is pretty helpful for the following:

1) You know the exact table name or table number, and want to see the
names of the variables, maybe to allow you to download individual
columns rather than entire table.  Example:

#  B08301 = "Means of Transportation to Work"
> table=acs.lookup(table.number="B08301") 

# check it out
> table

# select variables for total and all related to carpools 
> carpool.vars=table[c(1,4:9),]

# get data on just those variables
> acs.fetch(geography=geo.make(state=25), variable=carpool.vars, col.names="pretty")

2) You are looking for some specific keyword in a variable --
something like "Bicycle" or "Creole."  Note the key distinction here,
as stated in the "Working with acs.R" manual: as a rule of thumb,
table.name tells you what *sort of categories* the table's variables
contain, and keyword tells you what *particular categories* each
specific variable includes.

Hope that helps.

--Ezra

At Fri, 30 Aug 2013 01:41:21 -0400, M Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> 
> I was on the webinar today and went digging for the table and variable  
> name "cheat sheet". I think I've found it:
> 
> 1. Go to http://www.census.gov/developers/data/. That's the  
> developers' 'available data' page.
> 2. On the left side of the page there are some documentation links.  
> Under ACS, there are two links:
> 
>     2007-2011 ACS API Variables [XML]  
> http://www.census.gov/developers/data/acs_5yr_2011_var.xml
> 
>     2006-2010 ACS API Variables [XML]  
> http://www.census.gov/developers/data/acs_5yr_2010_var.xml
> 
> I downloaded those and they look like a 'dictionary' of table and  
> column names. It shouldn't be too hard to load these into a database.
> -- 
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/znmeb; Computational Journalism Publishers  
> Workbench
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> 
> Get out of the building - and don't come back till you have the order!
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--
Ezra Haber Glenn, AICP
Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Ave., Room 7-337
Cambridge, MA 02139
eglenn at mit.edu 
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