Warning: Trying to access array offset on true in /home/shermand/www/www/wp-content/themes/hybrid/library/functions/styles.php on line 77

Andy Beveridge’s gift to you this month

Hop on over to the New York Times's Mapping America tool for exploring census-tract estimates of key demographic variables from the American Community Survey (2005-2009 five-year estimates). Almost a decade ago, the Census Bureau started the American Community Survey as a replacement for the decennial census's long form (along with other goals), so no one received or completed the long form for 2010 because there wasn't one. Andy Beveridge of Queens College has been working on a data-display tool Social Explorer, and now thanks to long-term ties between Beveridge's workshop and the Times (or at least I am assuming that this is Andy's work because of the credits below a few key images), we get an amazing set of thematic maps and tract-by-tract estimates.

One important caveat: those are estimates, and for a lot of the data, the sampling margin of error (roughly twice the standard error for estimates) is very high because of small numbers of respondents in each census tract. You'll need to dig into the American Community Survey website to see the margin of error for specific data. Nonetheless, I am incredibly pleased that Andy's work is being more broadly known. About time!