Visualizing the census

Now that the 2010 survey is over, you might be wondering what we can learn from the data when the aggregated results are published. For a good guide to the kinds of questions you'll be able to answer, take a look at StatJump, where you can see tables and charts of the results of the 2000 census: population data (e.g. the largest cities), social demographic data (where are the most high school graduates?), economic data (which cities have the longest average commute?), and housing data (where I learned I work in the city with the most houses valued over $1M -- although the housing crash may change that when the 2010 data are out). Nicest of all, many of the variables are presented as choropleths (created with R, of course), so you can see maps of the US showing how the variables are distributed geographically, like this:

Percent of People Born in U.S. by County:

Check out the StatJump website at the link below to check out dozens of other charts and tables from the 2000 Census.

StatJump: Home Page

Comments

[Alex]

Not R, but I would recommend checking out the OnTheMap project at Census (http://lehdmap4.did.census.gov/themap4/). It has some nice visualizations and very interesting, fine-grained geographical data (which can be exported to R).