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Add explicit cb parameter to get_decennial() and get_acs() documentation #604

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leehach opened this issue Feb 5, 2025 · 0 comments
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@leehach
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leehach commented Feb 5, 2025

Hopefully minor request.

When using get_decennial() or get_acs(), tidycensus defaults to downloading 500k cartographic boundary files (cb = TRUE). However, the underlying package tigris defaults to downloading TIGER/Line files (cb = FALSE). I knew about the tigris behavior, and I assumed tidycensus was using the same default as tigris. I found documentation in the Spatial data in tidycensus vignette, but it is not included in the documentation for get_decennial() or get_acs(), where the cb parameter is just subsumed by ... "Other keyword arguments".

IMO, if cb is going to have a different default in tidycensus than tigris, the parameter and default should be made explicit in the get_decennial() and get_acs() documentation.

Irrelevant trivia: I should have realized this sooner, or maybe I just forgot. This came up because of Census FTP servers being down (Feb 4, 2025). Census API is working, so get_decennial() is downloading demographic tables, but geometry = TRUE is failing. This sent me to my cache directory to see what files had accumulated, and I was surprised to see the cartographic boundary files instead of the TIGER/Line files. (Unfortunately working on a recently purchased laptop, so my cache is not very large right now.)

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