Exporting Census Data for Mapping
Exporting Census Data for Mapping
Transcript
alright so we are going to be
downloading data from the US Census
Bureau that we can use in mapping
software such as cartoDB so the default
way you download this data you can't map
it or you can't map it easily so i'm
going to show you the tips and the
tricks in order to find your data and
map it so we don't care about community
facts we don't care about guided search
we care about advanced search now also
in order to get to the American fact
finder website for the Census Bureau all
you need to type in is fact-finder Texas
gov and then it redirects you to this
terribly long URL so we want to see
advanced search show me all and now you
have a somewhat confusing search tool
here so I'm concerned about the
different counties in the US I want to
map on a curb per county basis so the
first thing I'm going to do is refine by
geography so from the sidebar going to
click geography and there's a drop down
here and there are all sorts of
different geographies I could use
usually you're going to use state county
maybe census tract maybe if you go down
here of metropolitan statistical area
which is just big cities so I'm going to
select County and if I were just doing
this in a specific state I could select
a specific state from the drop-down so
let's say I want to do only counties in
Arizona I would click Clowney Arizona
and then it would give me different
options down here I want every county in
the US so I'm going back to the empty
select estate I'm going to click all
counties within the United States and
add to your selections so there's that
fun animation where it goes over into
the sidebar and now we are done refining
geography so we can click close now we
need to figure out what our map is going
to be about I'm going to do one about
income across the u.s. so sort of type
income I mean it suggests a few
different things to me these are
different tables these I believe our
categories so I think maybe household
income sounds interesting I'm going to
click that
and I'm going to click go and this is
new they suggest a few different fun
good tables for you to go through so
income in the past 12 months sounds
pretty good for me selected economic
characteristics is a good one but it's
actually too big to put into Carnegie
beef so just going to go in come in the
past 12 months click through it loads it
up and you see that every single row
here is this is let's say the the number
of people in each one median income in
dollars is right there followed by the
number of four percent of people in each
one of these brackets and if you go this
way you see that all of the columns are
different counties so we have one two
three four five six seven eight
different columns just for alt agha
County Alabama this is what we want to
have happen is we would like to have
every single row be a different County
additionally we are not looking at
margin of error right now and the margin
of error will actually double the size
of our table so first thing we're going
to do is we're going to get rid of
margin of error which makes me sound
like a bad person but alright modified
table you're going to click that here
and then there's a little filter button
here so click filter and then it says so
you're clicking the filter one that's
right next to the word estimate so
filter display columns where it's one of
the following and we want estimate we
don't want margin of error I'll do a
little bit of loading and there we go it
filters out the margin of errors the
other thing that we want to have happen
is we want every county to be a row not
a column so what we need to do is
somehow switch these columns here into
being rose and the way we do that is we
appear when click transpose rows /
columns and there we go that was easy
right so now every county has a few
different different guys here and the
column each one is the number so let us
export this we're going to go to
download and this is very important data
and annotations and separate files and
uncheck include descriptive data element
names so it's going to be a CSV don't
click any of the stuff down here make
sure you have data and annotations in
separate file selected and include
descriptive data element names
unselected we're going to click OK it's
going to do a little bit of processing
for us we will click download and it
will save us a zip file so inside of
this is that file there are several
different files the seals open the csv
first well they're all CSVs but this csv
here if you look at all of the column
names they are very very very very
confusing these are not the words that
we saw on the Census Bureau site these
are not total these are not less than
10,000 10,000 to you know 14 999 these
are crazy crazy titles and the way to
know what those mean is to actually go
into this metadata and the metadata will
tell you what every single one of those
categories means and then you can just
take this data import it right into cart
0 DB you're probably going to merge it
with a County's shapefile just by using
the GOI d over here and that's about it
you have successfully downloaded some
data from the Census Bureau
downloading data from the US Census
Bureau that we can use in mapping
software such as cartoDB so the default
way you download this data you can't map
it or you can't map it easily so i'm
going to show you the tips and the
tricks in order to find your data and
map it so we don't care about community
facts we don't care about guided search
we care about advanced search now also
in order to get to the American fact
finder website for the Census Bureau all
you need to type in is fact-finder Texas
gov and then it redirects you to this
terribly long URL so we want to see
advanced search show me all and now you
have a somewhat confusing search tool
here so I'm concerned about the
different counties in the US I want to
map on a curb per county basis so the
first thing I'm going to do is refine by
geography so from the sidebar going to
click geography and there's a drop down
here and there are all sorts of
different geographies I could use
usually you're going to use state county
maybe census tract maybe if you go down
here of metropolitan statistical area
which is just big cities so I'm going to
select County and if I were just doing
this in a specific state I could select
a specific state from the drop-down so
let's say I want to do only counties in
Arizona I would click Clowney Arizona
and then it would give me different
options down here I want every county in
the US so I'm going back to the empty
select estate I'm going to click all
counties within the United States and
add to your selections so there's that
fun animation where it goes over into
the sidebar and now we are done refining
geography so we can click close now we
need to figure out what our map is going
to be about I'm going to do one about
income across the u.s. so sort of type
income I mean it suggests a few
different things to me these are
different tables these I believe our
categories so I think maybe household
income sounds interesting I'm going to
click that
and I'm going to click go and this is
new they suggest a few different fun
good tables for you to go through so
income in the past 12 months sounds
pretty good for me selected economic
characteristics is a good one but it's
actually too big to put into Carnegie
beef so just going to go in come in the
past 12 months click through it loads it
up and you see that every single row
here is this is let's say the the number
of people in each one median income in
dollars is right there followed by the
number of four percent of people in each
one of these brackets and if you go this
way you see that all of the columns are
different counties so we have one two
three four five six seven eight
different columns just for alt agha
County Alabama this is what we want to
have happen is we would like to have
every single row be a different County
additionally we are not looking at
margin of error right now and the margin
of error will actually double the size
of our table so first thing we're going
to do is we're going to get rid of
margin of error which makes me sound
like a bad person but alright modified
table you're going to click that here
and then there's a little filter button
here so click filter and then it says so
you're clicking the filter one that's
right next to the word estimate so
filter display columns where it's one of
the following and we want estimate we
don't want margin of error I'll do a
little bit of loading and there we go it
filters out the margin of errors the
other thing that we want to have happen
is we want every county to be a row not
a column so what we need to do is
somehow switch these columns here into
being rose and the way we do that is we
appear when click transpose rows /
columns and there we go that was easy
right so now every county has a few
different different guys here and the
column each one is the number so let us
export this we're going to go to
download and this is very important data
and annotations and separate files and
uncheck include descriptive data element
names so it's going to be a CSV don't
click any of the stuff down here make
sure you have data and annotations in
separate file selected and include
descriptive data element names
unselected we're going to click OK it's
going to do a little bit of processing
for us we will click download and it
will save us a zip file so inside of
this is that file there are several
different files the seals open the csv
first well they're all CSVs but this csv
here if you look at all of the column
names they are very very very very
confusing these are not the words that
we saw on the Census Bureau site these
are not total these are not less than
10,000 10,000 to you know 14 999 these
are crazy crazy titles and the way to
know what those mean is to actually go
into this metadata and the metadata will
tell you what every single one of those
categories means and then you can just
take this data import it right into cart
0 DB you're probably going to merge it
with a County's shapefile just by using
the GOI d over here and that's about it
you have successfully downloaded some
data from the Census Bureau