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Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

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Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#121

Post by tempodox »

arjie wrote: post #74

Pretty sad, in my opinion. In my ideal the state should have visibility into the shape of the people present so that we can make good decisions about our combined organization. I think we’re making a mistake we will come to regret by intentionally damaging our data collection infrastructure. I think a large amount of the US’s success is the result of good institutions handling granular data. Policies can be adjusted…

> I think we’re making a mistake we will come to regret by intentionally damaging our data collection infrastructure.

Intentionally damaging infrastructure is the recurring theme of this administration.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#122

Post by ghaff »

simonw wrote: post #61
lokar wrote: post #53

Can anyone share how other countries handle this?

A lot of countries are really bad at running their census. https://asteriskmag.com/issues/11/why-governments-cant-count

And a lot of countries have things like national IDs that, rightly or wrongly, given things like RealID and passports, that a lot of Americans just don't like on principle.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#123

Post by mschuster91 »

Rygian wrote: post #87
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #50

Coming from a certain european country, you never know what answer on the census might get you into trouble. "What is your religious affiliation". Seems perfectly innocuous, but turned out to be retroactively fatal if your answer could be attributed to you by a certain foreign occupier in the 1940s .

"What is your religious affiliation" makes absolutely no sense in a census exercise. IMO.

It actually does. Religious affinity can absolutely be useful for longer trend studies, and census data is usually of much, much higher quality than other random sample studies.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#124

Post by kajman »

I "enumerated" for the last census. Trust in my community was already not high* and I had lots of interesting encounters. I really believed the rather invasive data I was collecting with a friendly face would be used and handled responsibly. I feel for the poor souls that'll sign up to go door to door for 2030 now that the firewalls against weaponizing and monetizing all of our sensitive government data has been torn down, and even more for those that will volunteer information that can hurt them.

The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me. The data collected was such an important baseline of common understanding, and this will not be a good thing for its future quality. I've grown very jaded now seeing all the things taken for granted in this country and lost or degraded recently with a whimper.

*: To be fair, they sent me specifically to places that didn't respond, so I was naturally led to believe that everyone in my region hated the government, ignored bizzarrely threatening fliers, or had recently moved and had no knowledge of the inhabitants (if any) during the census period.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#125

Post by talon8635 »

Rygian wrote: post #87
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #50

Coming from a certain european country, you never know what answer on the census might get you into trouble. "What is your religious affiliation". Seems perfectly innocuous, but turned out to be retroactively fatal if your answer could be attributed to you by a certain foreign occupier in the 1940s .

"What is your religious affiliation" makes absolutely no sense in a census exercise. IMO.

The point might be going over my head… why does it make no sense?

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#126

Post by WillPostForFood »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #50

Coming from a certain european country, you never know what answer on the census might get you into trouble. "What is your religious affiliation". Seems perfectly innocuous, but turned out to be retroactively fatal if your answer could be attributed to you by a certain foreign occupier in the 1940s .

Asking about your religion on the census is against the law in the US:

no person shall be compelled to disclose information relative to his religious beliefs or to membership in a religious body.

https://www.congress.gov/94/statute/STATUTE-90/STATUTE-90-Pg...

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#127

Post by mschuster91 »

MinimalAction wrote: post #48

Whatever you do, there is a level of trust that is assumed when census takes place. The trust that this data is then not identified in a way that could be targeted for scams, frauds, and other such evils. But in NY, house sale records are made public but much to the detriment, many mortgage companies fake a bill for payment. Differential privacy is absolutely necessary, and the social scientists being unable to recon…

> But in NY, house sale records are made public but much to the detriment, many mortgage companies fake a bill for payment.

That frankly sounds more like a failure of enforcement, on top of a failure of the construction of the financial system. Here in Germany, it is absolutely not a common thing that mortgages or the banks holding them get sold like a hot potato towards some other sucker, and thus such a letter would cause immediate suspicion.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#128

Post by airstrike »

ptidhomme wrote: post #109
airstrike wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get the idea that migration is "planned"? You've lost the plot entirely

Someone must be funding the NGOs organizing it all.

George Soros, probably

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#129

Post by pelorat »

lokar wrote: post #53

Can anyone share how other countries handle this?

Sure, in Europe we don't because we already have databases of all citizens, also recording attributes like race, skin color, religious affiliation or political leaning in a database is highly illegal, both for the government and for private use.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#130

Post by layer8 »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #96

Can anyone explain to me the previous state and why it was desirable? I admittedly do not understand why people are getting riled up. I am not being difficult. I really don't understand the original state and the changed state here.

Read up here for example: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/2020/...
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