[acs-r] Table and variable names

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Quoting Ezra Haber Glenn <eglenn at MIT.EDU>:

>
> 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

Yes ... it helps. Where I'm coming from on this is from a perspective  
of reproducible research as applied to computational journalism. What  
I want to do is build a database, either conventional SQL/GIS or  
perhaps a NoSQL database if the algorithms dictate that, containing  
*all* the most recent census data for the Vancouver/Portland/Salem  
area. Maybe my friends over at Portland State University or Metro have  
already done this, loaded it into their (expensive) ESRI tools. etc.,  
but then again, maybe they haven't. ;-)

In any event, rather than say, looking for places where people of  
Cypriot descent over 65 can be found, I'm looking for reproducible,  
systematic, explorable, comprehensive and understandable data for my  
region. And that means, for the moment, downloading *all* the ACS  
tables for the area at the highest possible resolution and knowing the  
definitions of all the columns in those tables.

> 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
>> http://j.mp/CompJournBench/
>>
>> 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
> http://dusp.mit.edu/faculty/ezra-glenn |   
> http://eglenn.scripts.mit.edu/citystate/
> 617.253.2024 (w)
> 617.721.7131 (c)
>



-- 
Twitter: http://twitter.com/znmeb; Computational Journalism Publishers  
Workbench
http://j.mp/CompJournBench/

Get out of the building - and don't come back till you have the order!