Help with MCDC Data and Applications

Providing in-depth looks at topics related to census data and geography.

Race and ethnicity in the census may help clear up confusion about these two different, nonoverlapping categories.
Measures of income in the census looks at all the different ways you can look at income in the data products from the Census Bureau. The focus is on the utility of the various measures and features a chart that summarizes and rates the measures.
Census geography and summary levels looks at all the various types of geographic units that are used for summarizing census data.
PUMAs (public use microdata areas) have become a much more visible geographic unit because of the availability of annually updated American Community Survey data. This page tells you all you need to know about them.
The ZIP code resources page is by far the oldest and most popular of these help pages. It was orginally written in the early 1990s to be a sort of FAQ page regarding ZIP code geography.

Ten things to know about the MCDC public data archive
Ten things to know about the American Community Survey (2005 edition) and its sequel Ten more things to know about the American Community Survey provide insights into this critically important data resource. The first tutorial is for newbies, whereas the sequel has more in-depth content and how it can be accessed.
Ten things to know about urban vs. rural goes beyond the simple definition of the concepts. It deals not only with what urban means but also with what it does not mean (metropolitan).

Uexplore/Dexter tutorials (mostly PowerPoint format)
Data Allocation Using Geographic Equivalency Files is a highly technical tutorial for experienced users, showing how to do source-to-target data allocations.
See a PowerPoint presentation on using Geocorr, presented by John Blodgett at the 2015 Missouri GIS Conference, Springfield, MO.