dlab-berkeley / R-Census-Data

Workshop on fetching and mapping census data with tidycensus
https://dlab-berkeley.github.io/Census-Data-in-R/Lessons/Census-Data-in-R-slides.html#1
MIT License
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Statistical evidence of racial underrepresentation in US Census data. #8

Open Averysaurus opened 2 years ago

Averysaurus commented 2 years ago

in the Facet Map section of the workshop, (around line 800-850) there is a call that returns median income by race in Alameda County:

medhhinc_facet_map <- alco_mhhinc_by_race %>%
                        ggplot(aes(fill = estimate)) +
                          facet_wrap(~variable) +
                          geom_sf(color=NA) +
                          scale_fill_viridis_c(option="magma")

medhhinc_facet_map

While our workshop explored these maps as a group, we were struck by the grayed out areas evident which led us to a bigger conversation about race and under representation in US Census data. There may not be any quick solution to this, would we be able include, or touch on the significance and impact of this kind of evidence in the workshop?

pattyf commented 2 years ago

That's a good discussion point to add. There is another factor to this and that is the need to maintain individual privacy. The census suppresses any aggregate data value that is based on fewer than N (10 I think) individuals for privacy reasons.