Create a US State choropleth from ACS data

Creates a choropleth of US States using the US Census' American Community Survey (ACS) data. Requires the acs package to be installed, and a Census API Key to be set with the acs's api.key.install function. Census API keys can be obtained at http://www.census.gov/developers/tos/key_request.html.

state_choropleth_acs(tableId, endyear = 2011, span = 5,
  num_colors = 7, zoom = NULL)

Arguments

tableId

The id of an ACS table
endyear

The end year of the survey to use. See acs.fetch (?acs.fetch) and http://1.usa.gov/1geFSSj for details.
span

The span of time to use. See acs.fetch and http://1.usa.gov/1geFSSj for details.
num_colors

The number of colors on the map. A value of 1 will use a continuous scale. A value in [2, 9] will use that many colors.
zoom

An optional list of states to zoom in on. Must come from the "name" column in ?state.regions.

Value

A choropleth.

References

Uses the acs package created by Ezra Haber Glenn.

See also

api.key.install in the acs package which sets an Census API key for the acs library

http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/help/jsf/pages/metadata.xhtml?lang=en&type=survey&id=survey.en.ACS_ACS which contains a list of all ACS surveys.

Examples

# median income, default parameters
state_choropleth_acs("B19301")
#> Warning: No data found at:
#>   https://api.census.gov/data/2011/acs5?key=f8b2a6df01479981aef39577b3c4466f5a4c8274&get=B19301_001E,B19301_001M,NAME&for=state:*
#> Error in file(file, "rt"): cannot open the connection to 'https://api.census.gov/data/2011/acs5?key=f8b2a6df01479981aef39577b3c4466f5a4c8274&get=B19301_001E,B19301_001M,NAME&for=state:*'

# continuous scale, zooming in on New York, New Jersey and Connecticut
state_choropleth_acs("B19301", num_colors=1, zoom=c("new york", "new jersey", "connecticut"))
#> Warning: No data found at:
#>   https://api.census.gov/data/2011/acs5?key=f8b2a6df01479981aef39577b3c4466f5a4c8274&get=B19301_001E,B19301_001M,NAME&for=state:*
#> Error in file(file, "rt"): cannot open the connection to 'https://api.census.gov/data/2011/acs5?key=f8b2a6df01479981aef39577b3c4466f5a4c8274&get=B19301_001E,B19301_001M,NAME&for=state:*'