This week in the Goldfields Art Centre I met Alan Radford and Steve Austin of the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Alan and Steve are both working as Engagement managers.
They have – as we discussed – possibly the most nerdy activities in the world competing with the CERN orienteering club. (If you know of more nerdy jobs, let me know)
Anyway – they let me know about Table Builder (read more cut/paste info after the break) which is a new system that allows you to make your own data products from the ABS data pool. We also discussed that as the census happens every 5 years and the population of Kalgoorlie changes by 50% every 2 years (completely ambit claim that they agreed with in a completely ambit manner) then the census probably is only a snapshot in a rapidly changing stream, (like a cross-section of a breaking wave – it is true, but may not reflect what’s before and after the snapshot). Venkat’s article on stream citizens is relevant in the Goldfields – FIFO miners, snowbirds, Aboriginal people, Highschool students, expat New Zealanders ( The greatest concentration of Kiwis outside NZ is here) all share high-mobility in common.
So, how can Australia measure it’s flowing cultures better?
Image: Animated screen showing a pile of suitcases in an Airport somewhere in the Stream.
TableBuilder allows users the freedom to construct basic to complex tables of data. You can build tables for all geographic areas as defined in the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) webpage, except Mesh Blocks.
For the 2011 Census, there are two versions of TableBuilder.
TableBuilder Basic is a free product designed for clients who have some experience using Census data and who want to construct basic data tables. TableBuilder Basic provides access to most Census data in a range of topic-based data cubes that include classifications such as age, education, housing, income, transport, religion, ethnicity and occupation.
