I really wish the Census would publish more normalized data sources. For example, the American Community Survey summary file is effectively a giant table with thousands of rows (representing different geographies) and thousands of columns (representing different statistics that have been calculated for those geographies). The columns just have an ID and a name that tells you what's in there, but it will be something like "median income for black or african american women with a master's degree." If you want that data point, you basically have to go searching through a bunch of docs (or one of their horrendous online interfaces) to find out the ID of the column.
Instead, I'd love to have a set of tables... in each one, you'd have a geography column and then, using my above example, a race column, a gender column, an educational attainment column and a median income column. Then you could easily load that data to a database and run a SELECT query over the information to get what you need.
Heck, I'd even settle for metadata that was good enough to enable me to construct this stuff myself. For example, for each column ID, tell me what variables were used to construct it and what their values were equal to. Unfortunately I've contacted the Census Bureau and they've told me such a thing doesn't exist.
Instead, I'd love to have a set of tables... in each one, you'd have a geography column and then, using my above example, a race column, a gender column, an educational attainment column and a median income column. Then you could easily load that data to a database and run a SELECT query over the information to get what you need.
Heck, I'd even settle for metadata that was good enough to enable me to construct this stuff myself. For example, for each column ID, tell me what variables were used to construct it and what their values were equal to. Unfortunately I've contacted the Census Bureau and they've told me such a thing doesn't exist.