[R] Households per Census block

David Winsemius dwinsemius at comcast.net
Tue Aug 4 22:30:03 CEST 2015 

On Aug 4, 2015, at 12:31 PM, Keith S Weintraub wrote:

> Can you give me a for-instance of “populations”? Is there a table or chart or list or…
> 
> Also I guess that I should leave my R session on for as long as possible as “install.blk” takes a really long time to re-upload if that is what it is doing.
> 
> Does install.blk go to the source every time?

I have no experience with that package, but the help page says:
======:
Warning:

This is an extremely large file (around 2 gigs) and should only be installed if you have a very good connection. Also it is worth noting that for all systems the install is from source and can take quite a bit of time to install.
======:

It also says you need to provide an argument to the function: one of "osx", "linux" or "windows".

I would have guessed that you only need to run it once, and after reading its source continue to think that there should have been a package installed, which would then persist and not need to be repeatedly installed.

-- 
David

> 
> Thanks again.
> ---
> KW
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Aug 4, 2015, at 3:22 PM, Zack Almquist <almquist at umn.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> P.S. The US census has different "populations" (or worlds) so make sure the housing variable you use is accessing the correct "world."
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> -- Zack
>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>> Zack W.  Almquist
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of Sociology and School of Statistics
>> Affiliate, Minnesota Population Center
>> University of Minnesota
>> 
>> On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 2:12 PM, Zack Almquist <almquist at umn.edu> wrote:
>> Hi Keith,
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 12:43 PM, Keith S Weintraub <kw1958 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I had to download a bunch of stuff but I got it mostly working.
>> 
>> Unfortunately using the alternative method I get the following:
>> 
>>> housing<-CensusAPI2010(c("H0010001"), state.fips=state.fips, level = c("block"), key, summaryfile = c("sf1"))
>> Error in file(con, "r") : cannot open the connection
>> In addition: Warning message:
>> In file(con, "r") : cannot open: HTTP status was '400 Bad Request’
>> 
>> Sorry that is my bad, I didn't verify the variable name at (http://api.census.gov/data/2010/sf1/variables.html). This seems to work for me, as a quick test:
>> 
>> housing<-CensusAPI2010(variables="H0060001", state.fips="06", level = c("tract"), key, summaryfile = c("sf1"))
>> 
>> So the larger example:
>> 
>> ## Get all states fips code
>> data(countyfips)
>> state.fips<-unique(substr(countyfips$fips,1,2))
>> head(state.fips)
>> length(state.fips) ## will be 51=50 (states)+ 1(DC)
>> ## You will need a census key
>> key<-"YOUR KEY HERE"
>> housing<-CensusAPI2010(c("H0060001"), state.fips=state.fips, level = c("block"), key, summaryfile = c("sf1"))
>> 
>> should work just fine.
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> -- Zack
>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>> Zack W.  Almquist
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of Sociology and School of Statistics
>> Affiliate, Minnesota Population Center
>> University of Minnesota
>> 
>> I have a feeling that this is not a problem with the API.
>> 
>> Thanks for your help,
>> KW
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Aug 3, 2015, at 2:12 PM, Zack Almquist <almquist at umn.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Anthony and Keith Weintraub,
>>> 
>>> Here is a way to do what you are asking using the UScensus2010 packages:
>>> 
>>> ## latest version of the package, not yet on CRAN
>>> install.packages("UScensus2010", repos="http://R-Forge.R-project.org")
>>> library(UScensus2010)
>>> install.blk()
>>> library(UScensus2010blk)
>>> ### You will want the H0010001 variable (see help(alabama.blk10))
>>> ### Other variables are also available
>>> ### You can use the new api function in UScensus2010 to get arbitrary variables from SF1 and acs
>>> 
>>> data(states.names)
>>> head(states.names)
>>> state.blk.housing<-vector("list",length(states.names))
>>> ## notice this could be greatly spead up using the library(parallel)
>>> ## with mclapply
>>> ## This will be somewhat slow b/c of so much spatial data
>>> for(i in 1:length(states.names)){
>>>      data(list=paste(states.names[i],"blk10",sep="."))
>>>      temp<-get(paste(states.names[i],"blk10",sep="."))
>>>       #unique b/c more shapefiles than fips
>>>      state.blk.housing[[i]]<-unique(temp at data[,c("fips","H0010001")])
>>>      print(i)
>>>      rm(paste(states.names,"blk10",sep="."))
>>> }
>>> 
>>> ###########
>>> # alternatively Using the US Census API function in the new UScensus2010 package
>>> ###########
>>> 
>>> ## Get all states fips code
>>> data(countyfips)
>>> state.fips<-unique(substr(countyfips$fips,1,2))
>>> head(state.fips)
>>> length(state.fips) ## will be 51=50 (states)+ 1(DC)
>>> ## You will need a census key
>>> key<-"YOUR KEY HERE"
>>> housing<-CensusAPI2010(c("H0010001"), state.fips=state.fips, level = c("block"), key, summaryfile = c("sf1"))
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> 
>>> -- Zack
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>>> Zack W.  Almquist
>>> Assistant Professor
>>> Department of Sociology and School of Statistics
>>> Affiliate, Minnesota Population Center
>>> University of Minnesota
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 12:43 PM, Anthony Damico <ajdamico at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> hi, ccing the package maintainer.  one alternative is to pull the HU100 variable directly from the census bureau's summary files: that variable starts at position 328 and ends at 336.  just modify this loop and you'll get a table with one-record-per-census-block in every state.
>>> 
>>> https://github.com/davidbrae/swmap/blob/master/how%20to%20map%20the%20consumer%20expenditure%20survey.R#L104
>>> 
>>> (1) line 134 change the very last -9 to 9
>>> (2) line 137 between "pop100" and "intptlat" add an "hu100"
>>> 
>>> 
>>> summary file docs-
>>> 
>>> http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/doc/sf1.pdf#page=18
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 11:55 AM, Keith S Weintraub <kw1958 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Folks,
>>> 
>>> I am using the UScensus2010 package and I am trying to figure out the number of households per census block.
>>> 
>>> There are a number of possible data downloads in the package but apparently I am not smart enough to figure out which data-set is appropriate and what functions to use.
>>> 
>>> Any help or pointers or links would be greatly appreciated.
>>> 
>>> Thanks for your time,
>>> Best,
>>> KW
>>> 
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA

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