Census Quiz
  1. How often is the census carried out?
  2. What law governs the US census? What does it require?
  3. When was the first US census carried out?
  4. About what was the US population when the first census was carried out?
  5. Arrange the following units in terms of what includes what:
    1. counties, states, blocks, census tracts, block groups
  6. "Census places" is not a nice neat part of the geographic hierarchy mentioned in the previous question. Explain.
  7. Explain the relationship between race and "Hispanic origin" in the 2010 census.
  8. What categories were used for race prior to 2010? How did this change in 2010?
  9. What is the difference between the "short form" and the "long form" questionnaire in the US Census?
  10. What do they call the people hired by the census bureau to go door to door to collect information?
  11. Does the US census use sampling? Explain.
  12. What does STF mean?
  13. Consider these two census tables "AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD SIZE OF OCCUPIED HOUSING UNITS BY TENURE (TWO OR MORE RACES HOUSEHOLDER)" and "AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD SIZE OF OCCUPIED HOUSING UNITS BY TENURE (TWO OR MORE RACES HOUSEHOLDER)." One is named "P6" and one is named "H12G." Which one is which?
  14. What is the current population of the US?
  15. About how many counties are there in the US? (http://gallery.usgs.gov/audios/124)
  16. About how many tracts, block groups, and blocks are there in the US? (https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tallies/tractblock.html)
  17. About how many people per tract? Block groups per tract? Blocks per tract? People per block group? People per block?
  18. What is the ACS? What is special about it as a survey? (https://ask.census.gov/faq.php?id=5000&faqId=7455)
  19. What is the census data used for?
  20. What is "apportionment" in connection with the census?
  21. Is individual level data available from the Census bureau?
  22. What data is available as a part of the 100% count at the block level?
  23. How many census tracts in Oakland?
  24. What is the range of census tract numbers in Oakland?
  25. A census tract has the full number of 060014077.1. Explain as fully as possible what the different parts of the number mean.
  26. What is iPUMS? (http://usa.ipums.org/usa/)
  27. A census block has id 060014078000204. Decode this number. SSCCCTTTTTTGBBB
  28. What does TIGER stand for?

References

2010 Census Background
Grayson, P. Making Sense of the Census, Part II: Working with Census Data MIT OCW.