Case #: GS-261688 - County names error on B1903

Hi,

I hope this is OK. I plan on posting when I find errors. Two county names are spelled differently on B1903. They are, Bayamón Municipio, Puerto Rico and Doña Ana County, New Mexico. The special characters are presented differently. I use names to match data sets and this is how I found out. In the other 30 tables all names matched exactly.

Parents
  • I'd strongly recommend you use the GEOID/FIPS codes rather than names, for precisely this reason. Some file formats don't do well with diacritical marks (you can see how they came out in your post). Often, even when they do appear to be formatted correctly, software still won't match them. That's why the GEOIDs exist, and are standard across all datasets you'll ever find at the county-equivalent level.

Reply
  • I'd strongly recommend you use the GEOID/FIPS codes rather than names, for precisely this reason. Some file formats don't do well with diacritical marks (you can see how they came out in your post). Often, even when they do appear to be formatted correctly, software still won't match them. That's why the GEOIDs exist, and are standard across all datasets you'll ever find at the county-equivalent level.

Children