[acs-r] acs.R: version 1.1 now available

[Ezra Haber Glenn]

Dear acs-R Users:

Development continues on the acs package for R, with the latest update
(version 1.1) now officially available on the CRAN repository at
<http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/acs/index.html>. If you've
already installed the package in the past, you can easily update with
the update.packages() command; if you've never installed it, you can
just as easily install it for the first time, by simply typing
install.packages("acs"). In either case, be sure to load the library
after installing by typing library(acs), and install (or re-install)
an API key with api.key.install() — see the documentation and the
latest version of the acs user guide
(<http://eglenn.scripts.mit.edu/citystate/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/wpid-working_with_acs_R1.pdf>,
which still references version 1.0, but is otherwise fine for this
version).

Beyond improvements described on CityState about version 1.0
(<http://eglenn.scripts.mit.edu/citystate/2013/06/now-on-cran-acs-r-version-1-0/>),
the most significant change in the latest version is support for many
more different combinations of census geography via the geo.make
function. As described in the manual and on-line help, users can now
specify options to create user-defined geographies composed of
combinations of states, counties, county subdivisions, tracts, places,
blockgroups (all available in the previous version), plus many more:
public use microdata areas (PUMAs), metropolitan statistical areas
(MSAs), combined statistical areas (CSAs), zip code tabulation areas,
census regions and divisions, congressional district and state
legislative districts (both upper and lower chambers), American Indian
Areas, state school districts (of various types), New England County
and Town Areas (NECTAs), and census urban areas. These geographies can
be combined to create 25 different census summary levels, which can
then even be bundled together to make even more complex geo.sets.

Once created and saved, these new user-defined geo.sets can be fed
into the existing acs.fetch function to immediately download data from
the ACS for these areas, combining them as desired in the process (and
handling all those pesky estimates and margins of error in
statistically-appropriate ways.)

We encourage you to update to the latest version and begin to explore
the full power of the census data now available through the Census
American Community Survey API.
--
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)