[acs-r] acs.R version 1.2: Now, with 2012 data

Sun Feb 2 01:25:32 EST 2014

Ed,

The pdxcensusdata project looks very interesting, but I still have the same
question - which years are accessible with the current version of acs.R?

You are (mostly) correct about the limitations of the current version of
choroplethr.  But in addition to state and county level data, it also
renders ZCTA (Zip Code Tabulated Area) level data.  Although I had trouble
working with the ZCTA shapefile that the census releases, so I just render
each ZIP as a colored dot, centered at the longitude and latitude of the
ZIP.  At that point its no longer a proper choropleth (because it lacks a
border), but I still thought it was worth including in the project.

I spoke with Ramnath briefly as well about using rCharts for rendering
choropleths, but I haven't had a chance to follow up with him yet.  Please
send along any interesting results you get.  I think that choropleths are
going to benefit a lot from the recent advances in interactive graphics.

Ari

On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 7:24 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb at znmeb.net>wrote:

> I have a script that will extract table code names and their
> definitions into CSV files so one can browse, rather than doing a
> lookup via acs.r lookup functions. See
> https://github.com/znmeb/pdxcensusdata/tree/master/csv. However, this
> only covers 2012, 2011 and 2010, not earlier data. I suspect if there
> are XML files on the Census Bureau site equivalent to the ones in
> acs.r I could hack up the scripts to use them without much trouble if
> you have a use for this.
>
> As far as I can tell, choropleth.R only goes down to the county level,
> not census tract, block group or block. I'm also talking to Ramnath
> Vaidyanathan of rCharts (http://ramnathv.github.io/rCharts/) about
> making Census choropleth maps using Leaflet.js, which will rended
> automagically on Github Pages. I'm going to try to hack something up
> for that this week in the above-linked project.
>
> On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 7:13 PM,  <arilamstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Ezra,
> >
> > Thanks for including this update.  I'm having a tough time figuring out
> what
> > data is available via acs.R.  From what you've said before, I gather that
> > it's "whatever is available via the Census API".  But that is also not
> clear
> > to me.  For example, I found this page on the census website, which I
> think
> > lists all ACS ever conducted:
> >
> >
> http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/help/jsf/pages/metadata.xhtml?lang=en&type=survey&id=survey.en.ACS_ACS
> >
> > But when I tried to get the 2005 or 2007 ACS I get an error message and
> lots
> > of warnings.  Do you have any documentation of what data your package
> > supports retrieving?
> >
> > I am interested in making animated gifs where each frame is a choropleth
> of
> > some demographic measurement at a particular year.  Right now that's
> > difficult because I'm just going hit or miss thru the list, and it seems
> to
> > be a lot of misses.
> >
> > Also, in version 1.0 of choroplethr I am just using the 2011 (default)
> ACS.
> > In subsequent versions I would like users to use whatever (year, span)
> > combinations acs.R supports.  I would also like to distribute a list of
> > available data with my code, but right now I don't have one.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Ari
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 5:30 PM, Ezra Haber Glenn <eglenn at mit.edu>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Dear acs.R folks:
> >>
> >> As some of you have noticed, the new five-year Census ACS data has
> >> just come out (see <http://www.census.gov/developers/data/>), and is
> >> now available via the Census API. To make sure you are able to fetch
> >> the freshest possible data to play with in R, I've updated the acs.R
> >> package to version 1.2, which now includes full support for the
> >> 2008-2012 ACS data.
> >>
> >> The latest version is now available on the CRAN repository -- see
> >> <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 for more info.
> >>
> >> To get the latest data, just continue to use the acs.fetch() function
> >> as usual, but specify endyear=2012. (By default, endyear is set to
> >> 2011 if no year is explicitly passed to acs.fetch, and I didn't want
> >> to change this for fear of breaking existing user scripts. In the
> >> future, we might to rethink this, so that it selects the most recent
> >> endyear by default. Thoughts?)
> >>
> >> (Note: It might take a day or two for the updates to percolate through
> >> the CRAN system.  If you update and you're not sure which version you
> >> are using, you can always type packageVersion("acs") to find out.)
> >> --
> >> 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)
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> acs-r mailing list
> >> acs-r at mit.edu
> >> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/acs-r
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > acs-r at mit.edu
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/znmeb; Computational Journalism on a Stick
> http://j.mp/CompJournoStickOverview
>
> My poltergeist can beat up your zeitgeist.
>
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