Simply using the U.S. census website one
can simply use the search engine to find information regarding FIPS codes. The FIPS
county code is a five-digit Federal
Information Processing System code, which is assigned to
identify counties in the United States. FIPS code are
important because they are used for to define geographic location for
public systems such as Emergency Alert System (EAS) and NOAA Weather Radio
(NWR). FIPS codes are simply an identifier, but there care cases when it is
used for class codes meaning different areas in the United States. Click here for more information on FIPS
class codes. Searching for FIPS codes is easy as to searching information
regarding what FIPS are and what they used for.
Mapping data is not always a headache especially
if you have OCD when it comes to organization, which in that case it would be
easy. Mapping the data for North and South Dakota is a difficult task because
it is free data from online sources, which are usually messy and disorganized,
but interesting information can be analyzed. The free data most of the time
will have a feature to download the data in excel where now it is easier to
finagle with. Yes there are a few issues to address, which can be a headache,
but that’s the idea of mapping. A lot of information online that is not in
excel form can still be converted into excel format by using certain features
in excel such as the “text to columns” where a table from a website can be
organized in cell blocks in excel.
By simply mapping population data from 1900
to 2015 for two states is a lot of work, but interesting work. Patterns are
found such as FIPS codes increasing by a number of 2, the amount of time a
certain county existed for or vice versa. Some counties ended around the 1970’s
and some counties started at the start of the 21st century. Mapping
all the counties in the entire US would be one big project because cleaning the
data would take long however the work would be fun. What other way of seeing
the trends and population movements across the US over decades? Mapping counties
is a far better way of seeking population changes over time versus statewide. There
are plenty of maps with all the counties in the US, but what if we broke down
one of those maps by regions and then by years? It would actually be seen
different because instead of seeing a bunch of squares together you will see
regions of those squares. Also the data itself would be interesting as well because
the you can find new counties and old counties.
