Stop motion music video
May 11, 2012 01:28 am • Permalink Music visualization with stop motion board games. You can't go wrong.
[via @jcukier]
Why the American Community Survey is worth keeping
May 10, 2012 10:02 am • Permalink Jerzy Wieczorek, a statistician with the U.S. Census Bureau, explains why the American Community Survey is worthwhile.
Besides the direct estimates from the ACS itself, the Census Bureau uses ACS data as the backbone of several other programs. For example, the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program provides annual data to the Department of Education for use in allocating funds to school districts, based on local counts and rates of children in poverty. Without the ACS we would be limited to using smaller surveys (and thus less accurate information about poverty in each school district) or older data (which can become outdated within a few years, such as during the recent recession). Either way, it would hurt our ability to allocate resources fairly to schoolchildren nationwide.
Similarly, the Census Bureau uses the ACS to produce other timely small-area estimates required by Congressional legislation or requested by other agencies: the number of people with health insurance, people with disabilities, minority language speakers, etc. The legislation requires a data source like the ACS not only so that it can be carried out well, but also so its progress can be monitored.
House votes to cut the American Community Survey
May 10, 2012 09:48 am • Permalink Last month Republicans were pushing a bill to get rid of the American Community Survey, an 11-page questionnaire about housing, education, and other things. Yesterday, a bill passed to cut the survey in a 232 to 190 vote.
Republicans, acknowledging its usefulness, attacked the survey as an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, arguing that the government has no business knowing how many flush toilets someone has, for instance.
"It would seem that these questions hardly fit the scope of what was intended or required by the Constitution," said Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), author of the amendment.
"This survey is inappropriate for taxpayer dollars," Webster added. "It's the definition of a breach of personal privacy. It's the picture of what's wrong in Washington, D.C. It's unconstitutional."
The ACS is the picture of what's wrong in Washington? This is idiocy.
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