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With a daughter just starting college, and a sociologist's interest in how students performance correlates to family demographic factors, I found the  U.S. Department of Education's  publication NCES 2013-151  "An Overview of Classes Taken and Credits Earned by Beginning Postsecondary Students" (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2013/2013151.pdf) intriguing.  It's pretty much 2003-2010 data. It demonstrates how the differences at home affects high school student success in Advanced Placement (AP) classes and testing. 

At 83 pages, it isn't the shortest of all reports, or the easiest reading.  Some of the conclusions aren't surprising - Asian kids are more likely to graduate with AP credits in place.  Students whose parents both completed a bachelor's degree are more likely to graduate with AP credits.  Students with high grades and high SAT scores are more likely to graduate with AP credits.

The study goes on to evaluate students taking remedial courses, withdrawals, repeated courses, etc.  It may not be everyone's cup of tea - but I suspect it's relevant to anyone with college-bound kids, or an interest in the local school system.

Mike McCurry, Ph.D.

TIGERweb has a new introductory tutorial at http://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/tigerwebmain/tigerweb_main.html  Since this is the map that interfaces with Census Data, and it only takes 8 minutes to go through the tutorial, it's worth spending half a coffee break to learn.

Mike McCurry, Ph.D.

The Census has released a user-friendly site called Easy Stats (http://www.census.gov/easystats/).  I'd like for everyone to try this application, because it's even more user-friendly than the old FactFinder was.  It extracts ACS data by state, county or place, on topics in the  financial, jobs, housing, people and education categories.  As with most American Community Survey data, it's best used with caution in smaller areas.  As an example, my home town showed 410 people over 25 on the ACS data, while the 2010 Census showed 432 -  five percent doesn't seem bad.  But the 2010 Census showed 191 men and 215 women, while the ACS showed 236 men and 174 women.  It's better in spots with large populations - but even so, it's easy to use, and in many cases, even with the weakness, it provides the best data available.

Mike McCurry, Ph.D.

The Kaufman Foundation has released "Job Creation, Worker Churning, and Wages at Young Businesses"  (http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedfiles/bds_report_7.pdf).  While the topic is probably more applicable to the Economics department one floor below me, there's an interesting comment on the cover: "Seventh in a series of reports using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics".  This one deals with the amount of jobs created by new, small businesses, rates of pay, and worker turnover.  It's kind of fun to see the research and publications that can be developed from Census Data.  If it interests you, it's 16 pages.

Mike McCurry, Ph.D.

I've received several media calls asking for an opinion or comment on the mass shooting in Connecticut.  I've referred them to articles on rampage shootings written by people whose academic credentials I respect - one is Randall Collins, whose September 1 article at the sociological eye covered the topic (http://sociological-eye.blogspot.com/2012/09/clues-to-mass-rampage-killers-deep.html) in his usual readable, responsible scientist way.  As a demographer, I work in a different sociological playground than Dr. Collins.

But as I thought about it, the reporters calling me were right - my job isn't policy, nor is it analyzing criminal motivation - it's sharing data, making it accessible so that people can better interpret what's going on.  For that, I'd like to share the table at http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm  which provides a two page record of crime in the US, from 1960 to 2011.

I note that the highest murder rates occurred in 1980 - 10.2 murders per 100,000 people.  In 2011, the rate had dropped to 4.7.  This is good news for 55 people out of each million, but not good for the 47 who remain in the statistic.  The tables contain data on more crimes - assault, burglary, rape, car theft, larceny - and, in general, they're all going down.

Still, national data doesn't let you know what's happening in your own neighborhood, so links to state and local statistics are available at http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/ .  South Dakota statistics are a bit different than national statistics - in 1980, the SD murder rate was 0.7 per 100,000.  By 2011, it had increased to 2.5.   

I don't think I can make a particularly strong case that South Dakota is more dangerous today than it was in 1980 - but I could present data that makes it look that way.