Tag Archives: Census

World Statistics Day

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Today is World Statistics Day as declared by the United Nations.  There are events all over the world including a mourning for the Canadian census.  The official US event (pdf) is in Washington, DC but a bunch of New Yorkers are celebrating at the bit.ly hack.a.bit.

Drew Conway has some ideas how to celebrate.

Ban Ki-Moon’s (UN Secretary General) message(pdf) on World Statistics Day:

On this first World Statistics Day I encourage the international community to work with the United Nations to enable all countries to meet their statistical needs.
 

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science and AI firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Government Data Science and AI Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

Census for a Song

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Turns out the Census cost less than expected.  I’ve always admired the Census Bureau for their good work, but now in this time of runaway government spending they came in 11% (NY Times) under budget.  That’s truly good work.

According to the Times, the massive advertising campaign helped get people to mail in their forms.  The lack of natural disasters and epidemics helped too.  Now we can look forward to the deluge of data that social scientists will probably go to town on, so I imagine.

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science and AI firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Government Data Science and AI Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

Just Filled Out the Census

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I just filled out my Census form and I have to say it was fairly painless and simple.  The short form (pdf) really only asks about age, ethnicity and other residences.  If anyone has a long form (now called the American Community Survey), please let me know your experiences filling that out.

The question concerning residence can be a bit tricky these days with so many people having multiple residences, children who live on their own but visit home frequently and couples who live togetherbut also maintain separate residences.

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science and AI firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Government Data Science and AI Conferences and author of R for Everyone.

Inflatable Census

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Being a stats junkie I’m probably more excited about filling out my Census forms than most people.  That said, a lot of my friends have expressed glee at receiving their Census forms.  Perhaps that says something about social group.

So you can imagine my delight when I came across this giant, inflatable Census form in Union Square last Saturday night.

I’m not sure about other markets, but there has been a huge advertising blitz for the Census in New York including the commercials featuring actors from the “Best in Show” and “A Mighty Wind” movies.

One more closeup of the moon-bounce inspired Census form after the break.

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Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science and AI firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Government Data Science and AI Conferences and author of R for Everyone.