[acs-r] Issue with 2012-2016 ACS data retrieval

[Ezra Haber Glenn]

Hmm: looking into this, it seems that the census folks have *once
again* changed the format of the ACS variable lookup code XML files,
which is messing up the package -- sorry about that.

Basically, at this point, the package needs to make all sorts of
little corrections for each different endyear/span combination.  I'll
try to troubleshoot and get it to work.

In the meanwhile, here's a clever trick you can use to trick the
package to use the variable numbers from a previous year (which is
safe, unless the variable numbers change, which is pretty rare):

# save a lookup from a year that works
a=acs.lookup(table.number="B01001", endyear=2015, span=5)

# use this in your new fetch:
acs.fetch(geography=geo.make(state="MA", county="*"), variable=a, endyear=2016, span=5)


Ta-da!

--Ezra

On Thu, 14 Dec 2017 10:07:27 -0500, Sara Hintze wrote:
> 
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> Hi there,
> 
> I am attempting to acquire the 2012-2016 ACS data and the scripts I’ve created to download
> previous ACS datasets are not working. I ran these against the 2016, 1-year data back in
> September, and they worked fine. However, now they error out on both the 1-year and 5-year
> 2016 datasets. On a simple lookup, I get the following:
> 
> acs.lookup(table.number="B01001", span=5, endyear=2016)
> 
> Error in data.frame(variable.code = names, table.number = table.numbers,  :
> 
>   arguments imply differing number of rows: 13, 25
> 
> However, if I include the keyword attribute as follows, it works just fine:
> 
> acs.lookup(endyear=2016, span=5, table.number="B01001", keyword="Female")
> 
> An object of class "acs.lookup"
> 
> endyear= 2016  ; span= 5
> 
> results:
> 
>    variable.code table.number table.name                         variable.name
> 
> 1     B01001_026       B01001 SEX BY AGE                 Estimate Total Female
> 
> 2     B01001_030       B01001 SEX BY AGE  Estimate Total Female 15 to 17 years
> 
> 3     B01001_034       B01001 SEX BY AGE  Estimate Total Female 22 to 24 years
> 
> 4     B01001_038       B01001 SEX BY AGE  Estimate Total Female 40 to 44 years
> 
> 5     B01001_042       B01001 SEX BY AGE Estimate Total Female 60 and 61 years
> 
> 6     B01001_046       B01001 SEX BY AGE  Estimate Total Female 70 to 74 years
> 
> 7     B01001_026       B01001 SEX BY AGE                 Estimate Total Female
> 
> 8     B01001_030       B01001 SEX BY AGE  Estimate Total Female 15 to 17 years
> 
> 9     B01001_034       B01001 SEX BY AGE  Estimate Total Female 22 to 24 years
> 
> 10    B01001_038       B01001 SEX BY AGE  Estimate Total Female 40 to 44 years
> 
> 11    B01001_042       B01001 SEX BY AGE Estimate Total Female 60 and 61 years
> 
> 12    B01001_046       B01001 SEX BY AGE  Estimate Total Female 70 to 74 years
> 
> Also, changing the endyear attribute to 2015, for example, works just fine. Any thoughts
> on what may be going on?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Sara
> 
> Sara Hintze
> 
> GIS Data Developer/Analyst | Research Services
> 
> Mid-America Regional Council
> 
> 600 Broadway Blvd., Ste 200
> 
> Kansas City, MO 64105
> 
> 816-701-8220 | www.marc.org
> 
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--
Ezra Haber Glenn, AICP
Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Ave., Room 7-346
Cambridge, MA 02139
eglenn at mit.edu 
http://dusp.mit.edu/faculty/ezra-glenn
617.253.2024 (w)
617.721.7131 (c)