LatinaLista — Whenever people talk about race, inevitably, a number is pulled from the air as fact to underscore a particular population. Sometimes it’s accurate; Most times, it’s not.
There’s only one definitive source that has all the numerical data that can accurately paint a complete picture of any part of the country when it comes to race — the U.S. Census.
But not everybody is at their computer all the time. Or if they access census.gov via their mobile phones, can everybody easily understand the spreadsheets for each city and compare it to other geographic areas — until now, because there’s an app for that!
Populus USA is a tool to understand the race-ethnic makeup of the nation. It was created by Dallas-based Dr. Edward Rincon, a researcher and development specialist, who does extensive work with Census data analysis, statistics and Hispanic marketing.
Though he finds searching and extrapolating information from the U.S. Census site to be effortless, he knew there were enough people who find searching the census site to be frustrating. So, he decided to find a way to make it as easy as possible.
With Populus USA, users find that:
All data is derived from the most credible source of U.S. population data – the U.S. Census Bureau – which conducts the American Community Survey (ACS) every year. App users will receive annual updates as well.
Selected population and income data are provided for the total population and four race-ethnic groups: whites, African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics.
Users can also select from a number of Top 20 Lists that rank order the largest states, metro areas, counties, and cities for each race-ethnic group.
The population and income profiles are available for five geographic levels: U.S., 51 states, 504 metropolitan/micropolitan areas, 802 counties, and 525 cities/places.
Users can easily email the data tables in pdf format to other persons for review, while a reference guide clarifies the demographic terminology used.
The app is available on iTunes for $4.99. Creators of the app say that there will be an upcoming update with the American Community Survey 2009 data that was recently released.
