Yesterday afternoon, gotta visit from a representative of US Census Bureau. I had been procrastinating filing out the in-mail request forms and this representative insisted upon filling it out online in her presence. I was a bit impressed with her conviction and determination to ensure that her job was done.
She asked questions that made me a bit uncomfortable, nonetheless i answered them all. Then the discussion started on how the data will be used and what type of analysis do i have access to. Having an analytics background, it was very curious.
She walked me through some of the portal features at http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml.
Its amazing how detailed the data is and how it can be helpful to target a perticular population segment that you are comfortable with or the ones that are comfortable with you e.g. approximately 150K Asians living in Harris County alone is a revelation upon me and begs me to do something about it.
I encourage all of you to go visit that website and look at the different ways providing census helps us and our local economy.
Happy reading !