Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS: A Workbook Approach to Learning GIS, 3rd Edition

Obtaining Data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census

____ 2. On the Internet, browse to www.census.gov. What time is it? ________ What is the U.S. population? _______________. Determine what the world’s population is. ________________.

Previous editions of this textbook provided instructions for finding the data for Knox County, Tennessee, only to (1) have students find that the website had changed and it wasn’t obvious how to find the data, and/or (2) discover that their institutions had firewalls erected so that the extensive data files couldn’t get through. So, I have abandoned the idea of trying to tell you how to get the files; rather I will provide them to you. If you plan to do a lot of work with census data, you might want to determine how to get these files on your own. Otherwise, just take a pass, skip to Step 4, and use the data I have provided.

____ 3. You ultimately want to find and obtain the following files on www.census.gov:

dt_dec_2000_sf1_u_data1.xls

dt_dec_2000_sf1_u_geo.xls

dt_readme.txt

readme_dec_2000_sf1.tx

The one you must have is:

dt_dec_2000_sf1_u_data1.xls

Good luck to you in finding and downloading it. Look around the census site. You may be able to get to it with American Fact Finder.

____ 4. If you don’t find and download the files, examine the folder IGIS-Arc_AUX/DCD. There you will find Extracted_Census_Files > output. In that folder note the existence of the above named files. You will need these files in a later step if you were not able ...