Household Data: A Heretical View
At the heart of geodemographic analysis lies the once revolutionary but now mundane site report – a simple aggregation of geographic data within a predefined geometric or arbitrary shape – a radius, a drive time, or perhaps a ZIP code polygon. Simple, but it serves in one way or another as the basis for most […]
The Illusion of Precision
Sometimes the increasingly prevalent marketing hype and oversell in this business simply annoys me to the point of arousing the normally dormant academic in me. When the first computerized and geo-referenced censuses were released in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, a small but interesting industry known as Geodemographics emerged from a limited number […]
Why I Really, Really Dislike The Census Metropolitan Areas
On site-based demographic reports, it is often helpful to have a benchmark column so that one can readily assess how a particular location is changing over time relative to a larger area. A benchmark area should be both immediately recognizable and geographically relevant. The notion of a metropolitan area seems like a reasonable […]
Surprise Shaking?
Most Americans know fully well that the west coast, especially California, is subject to frequent and often severe earthquakes. Many would not be overly surprised if the ‘big one’ eventually caused Los Angeles or San Francisco to fall into the Pacific Ocean. Those of us who live on the west coast aren’t particularly keen […]
Two of my all time favorite books
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. We’ve all heard that quote. The classic book on the fine art of lying with numbers, now over sixty years old and still available on Amazon….How To Lie With Statistics. If you torture the data enough, it will confess to anything. But, if you are a geographer, or just like […]
Geography, really?
One of my earliest memories growing up was sitting with my grandmother at the kitchen table in front of a large wall map of North America, where she would quiz me on the provinces and states and their capitals. By the time I went to school, I knew them all. I developed a love for […]
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