Chapter 1 Prerequisites

This book details synthetic population generation, or ‘synthpop’ generation, provides detailed methods and links (NOT YET PUBLISHED) to R Code to create your own synthpop using a combination of publicly available datasets. Please do not get this confused with Synth-Pop the British synthesizer movement, because, as Annie Lennox is quoted saying in the NYTimes in 1984:

“When you say ‘synth-pop,’ I immediately think of two guys with a synthesizer and a drum machine, and to me that’s boring.”

What does a synthetic population mean? Well, the following demonstrates what a synthetic population would look like for a sample of one Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA # 00503). N.B. This map is created using a random sampling of 25% of each respective census tract’s synthetic population generated in order to make it easier to view. The number of dots therefore represents the population density in that tract. Also note that we of course do not assume people are swimming in the water bodies. Flannery needs to figure out how to generate random points without placing them in the bodies of water.

We can compare this population to the census tract level statistics provided by ACS. Let’s take a look at the Guatemalan population by tract, for example. We see a similar concentration in the southern tracts of the PUMA.