It’s been a while since I last updated the acs.R package, but as noted here, I’ll be using CityState to provide updates and test-versions of the package prior to uploading to CRAN. I’m happy to report that we now have a near-final package of version 1.0.
The most significant improvements to the package (beyond those mentioned previously) are the following;
- The package is now capable of downloading data directly from the new Census American Community Survey API and importing into R (with proper statistical treatment of estimates and error, variable and geographic relabeling, and more), all through a single “acs.fetch()” function;
- The package includes a new “geo.make()” function to allow users to create their own custom geographies for organize and download data; and
- The package provides two special “lookup” tools to help filter through all the existing Census geographies (with the “geo.lookup()” function) and tables (with the “acs.lookup()” function) to find exactly what they want. These functions return new R “lookup” objects which can be saved, manipulated, and passed to acs.fetch() for downloading data.
I want to thank the very kind folks at the Puget Sound Regional Council, who have been supporting the development of this package (in exchange for some special attention to scripts and functions they really want to include for themselves and their member communities). They continue to provide excellent help and advice “from the trenches” as we refine the package.
If you’re interested in trying out the new version, you can download it below, along with a brief set of “Introductory Notes” written for the team at PSRC. (Users may also want to check out the manual for the previous version of the package and this article from 2011 on the package.)
First off, thank you for this amazing tool- hopefully this will save me from having that extra step between data retrieval from the ACS API and importing it into R.
Seemingly stupid question- what version of R should I be using?
Warning message:package ‘acs_1.0.tar.gz’ is not available (for R version 2.15.2)
Mara:
Thanks for the comment/question. As for which version, you should be
fine with almost anything recent (and certainly R version 2.15.2,
which it seems you are running). My guess is that you tried to
install the package from the CRAN repository, rather than downloading
the “acs_1.0.tar.gz” file from the CityState website
(http://eglenn.scripts.mit.edu/citystate/2013/02/major-improvements-to-acs-r-sneak-peak-at-version-1-0/).
Since this is a pre-release version, installation is a bit different.
After you download the file and save it on your computer somewhere,
you start R and type:
> install.packages(“path/to/acs_1.0.tar.gz”)
If that doesn’t work, try these additional options:
> install.packages(“/path/to/acs_1.0.tar.gz”, repos = NULL, type = “source”)
One of those should work, and then you’re good to go — but see the
draft user guide, too:
< http://eglenn.scripts.mit.edu/citystate/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/wpid-working_with_acs_R2.pdf>.
Once we catch all the bugs, I’ll add this to the repository, and you
will be able to install with just:
> install.packages(“acs”)
but for now, you need these extra steps.
Let me know how it goes!
Not to be that guy, but this is an amazing prospect for those of us who work with Census and ACS data, so can we get a more concrete timeline on this? When it’s going to be done? And what “done” means – how many ACS years, data sets, etc its going to cover? Those of us who work with Census data are immensely grateful for all your hard work!
John:
Thanks for your comment, and no worries — I’m glad to hear that you
think the package might be useful. The timeline is now — that
package is already available, and can do a lot already — but it is
also still in development, with new features being add. If you are
familiar with R as a programming environment already, you are good to
go — take a look at the user guide posted to the page you commented
on and you can get going.
As for what’s available, that depends some on the census: the tool
uses the Census API (< http://www.census.gov/developers/>), and so far,
they’ve only made available the 5 year data from 2006-2010 and
2007-2011, and only for certain geographies. As they add more sets,
the package will work for them as well, so my understanding is that it
is worth starting with, and hopefully will not become a dead-end.
Also, to address some of the shortcomings in available data, I’m also
adding in a tool to allow users to more easily download data from the
American factfinder site. They’ll still need to actually click the
download button in a browser, but the R package will do the search and
generate a url for them to do this.
–Ezra