Analyzing US Census Data in R

Analyzing US Census Data: Methods, Maps, and Models in R is a comprehensive book published with CRC Press in 2023. This resource serves as an online home for the book, offering a free online version alongside options to support its development. It aims to guide practitioners through the process of acquiring, wrangling, visualizing, and modeling US Census data effectively using the R programming language.

The book highlights the utility of R for managing various US Census data tasks within a single computing environment, addressing the previous need for multiple web interfaces and software platforms. It focuses on two primary types of Census data products: aggregate data, which includes counts or estimates for geographic units, and microdata, consisting of individual, anonymized Census records. Readers new to R and Census data can follow the book sequentially, while experienced analysts may use chapters as standalone manuals for specific tasks.

Key chapters introduce essential R packages such as tidycensus for data acquisition, the tidyverse for data preparation and wrangling, ggplot2 for data visualization best practices, and tigris for working with US Census Bureau geographic data. The content covers handling margins of error in the American Community Survey and building charts well-suited for presenting Census data analyses. This makes it a valuable resource for those in education, business, journalism, and other fields utilizing US Census data.