Calling out the Crickets

As a rule, we at AGS are not overly keen on the approach of talking about competitors negatively. Perhaps it is our polite Canadian heritage, where we are more likely to say that we are sorry for something we didn’t do than point fingers at the ones who did....

Race and the Census

The recent publication of the redistricting release of the 2020 census has resulted in some discussion about some of its more surprising results. The white population declined from 223.5 to 204.7 million between 2010 and 2020, by all accounts an unprecedented change....

Deep Dive into 2020 Census Block Data

To further help users understand how the privacy budget has affected small area data, we decided to deep dive into a specific area to see how it looks on the ground. We chose a block group which we know that has not changed over the past ten years, located in a...

Dealing with the 2020 Census

A tremendous effort in the analytics world is devoted to the task of data preparation and cleansing. Data exchanges refer to ‘curated’ data, which suggests that the suppliers of that data have gone to the trouble of estimating missing fields, reigning in outliers, and...
Using 2020 Census Data

Using 2020 Census Data

Over the past year or so, we have been giving a heads up that the 2020 census data was to be affected by new and more stringent non-disclosure rules intended to protect the identify of census respondents. We recognize that such protection is important while muttering...

Mermaids and Census Privacy Concerns

The PL94 data for the 2020 Census was recently released, and our data team found something, well, peculiar. There are now block groups over bodies of water. If there are people living in lakes and rivers, then they must be able to breathe underwater. And if they can...