New ACS Online Tool

The margins of error on many tract level estimates from the American Community Survey are very large and this poses a problem to a wide swath of ACS users.

Seth Spielman, David Folch, and Owen Mundy, supported by the NCRN, have announced a beta release of a web based tool for visualizing and reducing the margins of error in the ACS. This tool allows visualization and mapping of ACS estimates and their margins of error. It also allows viewing of new estimates with a smaller margin of error for geographies that we have created using a spatial optimization algorithm that gerrymanders census tracts (via grouping them) to produce new estimates.

Supporting documentation is available in the published article:

Spielman SE, Folch DC (2015) Reducing Uncertainty in the American Community Survey through Data-Driven Regionalization. PLoS ONE 10(2): e0115626. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115626

and the website is: https://reducinguncertainty.org