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Before we go on, let’s talk about a few of the categories for which data is available. The first category is is demographic data from the US Census Bureau, which we worked with last week in Social Explorer. But the real power of SimplyAnalytics is the availability of data about consumers. Consumer Expenditure provides figures tabulated from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that measure the total expenditures in one year by households in a geographic area for a certain type of product, such as Food and Transportation. On the other hand, Business Counts focus not on the consumer but on the producer side. For each geographic unit, this product provides a count of the number of companies and the number of employees engaging in certain sectors. Market Segments counts the number of people who match a certain profile. We’re lucky at Rice because Fondren subscribes to the additional products NielsenPRIZM and SimmonsLOCAL. Nielsen PRIZM basically provides ridiculously specific market segments. Go ahead To access NielsenPRIZM, go to the Data tab on the left panel, browse by Data Folder, and click on the Nielsen PRIZM category. For the categoryPremier US folder.
On the left, choose the Segments folder. Now we have a long list of variables to choose from. But I think most people would be a little thrown off by the Variable “Upper Crust.” What does that mean? To find out, we need to access the metadata. Click the right side of the bar to open the menu. The very last option in the menu is View Metadata. The definition provides information about exactly what the variable measures. Today we aren’t going to discuss every category in detail, but you can access metadata for every variable to reach an informed decision to download data.
There is a lot of interesting information, so at this time, I’m going to give you a few minutes to browse the available data individually.
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Optional: Create custom location, radius- don’t do during tutorial because the display is a mess
This page in is interactive, so you can pan around. You can zoom using either by using your scroll wheel or by clicking on the magnifying glass in the center and then drawing a box around your area of interest. To switch from zooming to panning, just click the icon that looks like a hand.
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Apply location mask: Clicking this will only show the data of your selected location on the map.
Data Filters
You can create new filter from favorite data variables. For example, make one to only show block groups where the Median Income is greater than $60,000. Click Apply.
Export
Once we are ready to share our work, we can export our map.
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One of the coolest features of SimplyAnalytics is the ability to export shapefiles because it saves a lot of processing in Excel and joining in ArcMap. To do this, click the menu between Filtering and Export in the top toolbar and click Export Shapefiles. You can choose what to export from your saved Locations and Data Variables. The only way to download shapefiles is via an email link that should be sent within 5 minutes.
Note that there are download size limits
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You can also click Categories (Browse Categories) to open a drop-down menu that shows Categories and Folders. Clicking Folders will show data in folders by data source (EASI, FBI, Claritas, Simmons). I think this was the organizational method in SimplyMap, and it allows you to choose very specifically the data type you want (ie. Census US>People and Households>Age>Total># Population, 0 to 5 Years (out of 30 or so options)). Unlike the default categories view, you won’t immediately see all the options in each broader category, which may be helpful if you are only concerned with one data type, know exactly what your source/target data is, or don’t like a cluttered screen.
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