Visualization

Data Notes

This visualization shows the number of people based on their age and sex. The graphic uses the 2016 ACS Public Use Microdata Sample which is created by the U.S. Census Bureau. It is rendered using Tableau Public. There are a couple of more things worth noting.

You probably have noticed there are sharp spikes on ages ending with 5’s and 0’s. This is something refereed to as heaping in surveys. This is when a respondent isn’t exactly sure of someone’s age and they make an educated guess. Most of the time, these guesses end with 5 or 0. I decided not to normalize the data, but this is a limitation of the visual.

Also, the highest ages in the graphic is 90. We all know that there are people older than 90 in the U.S., but due to the weighting or edits of the ACS Public Use Microdata Sample there are some strange variation in the data for the number of people over 90. To deal with that I decided to cut it off. Someone could normalize the data though to get rid of this effect. The totals at the bottom of the graphic do include all people though.

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