Template talk:US Census population

This template is awesome.

Moverton (t c), thanks for making this. I didn't know MediaWiki allowed templates to do math now. Good stuff. I've added an optional set of paramteers for a census estimate. Hope it is useful. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 19:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree; it is cool that templates can do math. What I'd like to see, though, instead of percent changes from census to census, is an average annual increase or decrease. For example, an increase of 100% over the decade amounts to an average annual increase of 6.93% (as $e^{10\times0.0693} = 2$). It's much easier to comprehend, I think. That aside, to my knowledge there's no way to use the natural logarithm (or any other), which is the only real way to do it. There may be ways to closely approximate ln that I'm not aware of. Does anyone else feel this way? D. F. Schmidt (talk) 04:10, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

It's done!!

There are no longer any U.S. articles that use {{Histpop}}! All articles have been switched to {{USCensusPop}}. /Timneu22 01:33, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Data tables

Hi, I've noticed that this template presents some accessibility problems. Please see Wikipedia:Accessibility#Data tables and don't hesitate to ask if you have any doubt about this issue. Thanks! —surueña 09:56, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect minus sign

Can someone who understands this template please correct it so that negative percent changes show correctly? They are currently displaying the negative as a hyphen rather than a minus sign (see the difference between hyphens, endashes, emdashes and minus signs at WP:DASH) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

This template does math using the wikimedia engine. Nothing can be changed here, the engine needs to be changed. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 12:36, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Y Fixed. I added Template:Val to all the percentages, so negative percentages should show with the correct minus sign now. Feel free to yell at me if I screwed something up. —Werson (talk) 05:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I'm happy to see you use {{val}}, but there is one problem with this: if the census was 0 and then increased, the percentage calculation is impossible. I'm not sure what it returns in this case, but {{val}} doesn't like it as evidenced in S.N.P.J.,_Pennsylvania. Can you find a way to fix this please?     — SkyLined (talk) 14:00, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks for identifying the bug! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 03:27, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Similar template?

Hi, I was wondering if there was a similar template to this, but that does not link to the US Census Data. For instance, I was looking at the South Africa article, and they use this template, which looks fine, but then each year links to articles for the United States Census for that year. It doesn't make any sense in the South Africa article to have links back to the US Census articles. I looked at the code, and it seems that if you use a Census year as the year, it automatically puts the links in there. It would be good to have the same exact template, minus the links to the US Census articles, so non-US articles could use the template and have it make sense. I don't really know how to make a new template, or else I'd try this myself. Thanks so much...the USCensusPop template is really cool. AstroZombieDC (talk) 23:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Because I don't know of any others, I created {{HistoricalPopulations}} to be a more generic version that accepts up to 25 years of data. I added it to the article you referenced, and you can see its proper usage there. —Mike 10:17, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

A template for that purpose already exists, its called {{histpop}}, and is linked above. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 13:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Merge

This template has similar functionality to Template:Histpop, and it's lacking in a few features that the other template has (and vice-versa). I'm proposing replacing both with a supertemplate, Template:Historical populations. I tried to make it work for all cases. It'll still link to US census entries where appropriate, but will also allow arbitrary odd years, and use for other countries, without the need for two separate templates. It also adopts the row-shading feature of Template:Histpop, but in a slightly more attractive fashion, and with the option to turn it off. Let me know what you think. —Werson (talk) 01:53, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Excess white space being added to articles

{{editprotected}} Can an admin change the two lines:
|}
<noinclude>
to just one line (like in so many other templates):
|}<noinclude>
so that the template doesn't add white space to articles? Thanks. Shawisland (talk) 05:43, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I request this edit. --fryed-peach (talk) 06:28, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Done Rjd0060 (talk) 15:40, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Bad grammar!!

Nice template, but bad grammar-- It's "historical population," not "historical populations."

I fail to agree without further explanation. Not that that matters, I suppose. For one, see Referendum#Terminology. Least grammatically ambiguous might be "number of people living here in past years." D. F. Schmidt (talk) 06:06, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Definition for abbreviations

Can the definition for the abbreviations be given at the bottom of the template?SriMesh | talk 14:14, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Whole numbers ought not be rounded off

The table of population by decade in the New Hampshire entry (Sec. 3, Demographics) is done by the {{USCensusPop}} macro. In two cases in that table (1880 and 1930), the percentage growth is a round number (9% and 5%). These should be 9.0% and 5.0%. They would line up better with the other percentages, and putting 9% in a table like this means to a scientist that you are only sure it's between 8.5% and 9.5%, which I'm sure is not the case. Thanks. --Spike-from-NH (talk) 21:52, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

• I don't know if there's a way to change it from 9% to 9.0%. Try asking at the talk page for the template Template talk:USCensusPop. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 21:58, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't know when it happened, but it's fixed now; thanks. --Spike-from-NH (talk) 21:57, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

No way to align to the left?

If I understand correctly, this box is always aligned to the right. Shouldn't left alignment be a choice as well? Ntsimp (talk) 05:19, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, otherwise it slides all the way down to the bottom of any infobox present, taking the text with it and leaving a virtual Sahara of whitespace. Please provide a left-aligned option. --Milkbreath (talk) 00:31, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Redirects

I noticed that the wikilinks for each year in this template must go through a redirect, i.e., United States Census, 1900 goes to 1900 United States Census. Is there a reason for this or is it an oversight? Mgreason (talk) 14:51, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Y Fixed. –Juliancolton ^Talk · ^Review 15:02, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Edit request

{{editprotected}}

I propose to add the following {{H:title}} to the 2nd row of this table, as can be seen in the example to the right.

 {{H:title|Population|Pop.}} {{H:title|Percent change|%±}}  

Historical populations
Census	Pop.		%±

68.101.219.116 (talk) 06:26, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Good idea. Seems uncontroversial, so Y Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:23, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Edit request - table alignment

{{editprotected}} Could this be updated to provide an option to manually change the table's default alignment? It really makes for poorly formated articles when there are infoboxes. It leads to a lot of unnecessary white space or misplaced tables. I'd keep the default right alignment, but having the option to force alignment on the left would be beneficial.DCmacnut<> 21:14, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Done. There was already an align parameter, but it wasn't fully functional. I have tweaked it a bit and added some documentation. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 15:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Vietnamese Wikipedia

The Vietnamese Wikipedia now has a template that accomplishes the same purpose as this template, albeit in bar chart form.  – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 07:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

FactFinder1 shutting down Fall of 2011

Email response that I received from the US Census Bureau today: Thank you for using American FactFinder. FactFinder 1 will be shutdown in late fall of 2011. To help with the transition to FactFinder 2, we have published a guide on how to link into the new system. The guide is called How to Build Deep Links into the New American FactFinder. It can be found below the tutorials on factfinder2.census.gov . Please let us know if you have any other questions. Sincerely, Jeremy Melissari, American FactFinder Staff, US Census Bureau. See http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/AFF_deep_linking_guide_v1.0.pdf and http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/aff2.html • Sbmeirow • Talk • 13:50, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Edit request: Use {{abbr}} instead of {{H:title}}

This template currently uses {{H:title}} to expand abbreviations inside the table header. I propose the more appropriate {{abbr}} be used instead:

• {{H:title|Population|Pop.}} → {{abbr|Pop.|Population}}
• {{H:title|Percent change|%±}} → {{abbr|%±|Percent change}}

(Note: The template parameters are inverted.)

Cosmetically, {{abbr}} displays a help cursor when expanding an abbreviation (e.g.).

More importantly, {{abbr}} ensures the expanded form remains accessible to screen reader users. For this reason, the documentation of {{H:title}} specifically recommends using {{abbr}} to mark abbreviations.

Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:H:title reveals {{H:title}} to be used primarily to annotate pronunciation as part of the IPA template family. —Cheng ✍ 06:37, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Okay, Y Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:28, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit request — Title of percent change column : abbreviation

Hello,

I request this modification :

The percent change column has this abbreviation : %±

Let's make the abbreviation more faithful to its meaning and to the contents of the column : ±%

To achieve that, please replace {{abbr|%±|Percent change}} with {{abbr|±%|Percent change}}.

I was going to do that, but the template is locked.

Thanks,

--Nnemo (talk) 00:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Edit request — Percent change : + or -

Hullo,

I request this modification :

The percent change has a - sign when the population decreases, but misses a + sign when the population increases. Let's add it. For consistency. And to make the contents of the percent change column faithful to the column's title.

I was going to do that, but the template is locked.

Thanks,

--Nnemo (talk) 00:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Edit Request - Estimates Bug

There is a bug with the way the percent change is calculated for estimated populations. If an estyear of 2010 or later is entered into the table following a 2010 Census value, the resulting percent change shown for the estimate will be calculated based on the 2000 Census value, not the 2010 Census value as would be appropriate. For an example, see Cavalier County, North Dakota#Demographics. The percent change for the 2010 population estimate should be 0% rather than the -17.4% that actually shows up. The similar template {{Historical populations}} currently does not have this problem. Mwmnp (talk) 05:35, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Hello - thanks for making your request. Fortunately, this isn't the template's fault. It appears in some of the county demographic sections, previous editors did not remove the estimated 2010 Census data when they added the actual 2010 Census data. This is why the Cavalier County, North Dakota article had a problem. I removed the estimated data, and the table is now correct. If you run across articles with a similar problem, be bold and fix them. :-)

It doesn't apply in this particular case since the problem wasn't the template itself, but requests to edit complex templates are often answered by admins (like me) who are not fluent in template-ese. In the future, when making an edit-protected request for a template, you need to be very specific about which current line(s) of the template you would like added, deleted, and/or changed. More information is available at WP:TEMPTEST. Thanks again for bringing the issue to our attention. :-) KrakatoaKatie 12:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I guess I should have tested the template by entering in a estyear of 2011 (or beyond) and seeing how the percent change responded. Interestingly, the estimated 2010 population was entered to the referenced article after the actual 2010 population was entered. In years when a census is taken, a population estimate for that year is actually published after the official census numbers, as the census is supposed to represent the population on the first of April, while all population estimates use the first of July as a standard date. Mwmnp (talk) 04:38, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Click to July 1, 2010 Estimate is counties in 50 states. I made edit in some counties in North Dakota. I used the Sandbox {{USCensusPop}} has from 2000 Census to 2011 Estimate for precent. Not 2010 census. {{Historical populations}} has 2010 Census to 2011 Estimate precent. Go see to Cass_County,_North_Dakota#Demographics and Grand_Forks_County,_North_Dakota#Demographics. 3 weeks ago through yesterday I made edit in all 254 counties in Texas is finished. I added historical population table in 1850 to 2010 Census. Not 2010 Estimate. My contributions is 208.107.212.115 at home; 24.111.34.170 in the Media Center Room; and 165.234.184.69 at Grand Forks Public Library. 2 weeks ago I made edit in List of cities in North Dakota is full list of cities is finished. End of April 2012 will update new July 1, 2011 Estimate 3,143 counties in the United States. End of June 2012 will update new July 1, 2011 Estimate all cities and towns.

Grand Forks County:

• 66,109 population on April 1, 2000 Census.
• 66,861 population on April 1, 2010 Census.
• 66,991 population on July 1, 2010 Estimate.
• 66,828 population on 2011 Estimate from GeoLytics.
• 66,653 population in 2015 Projection from Demographics Worker Commuter in North Carolina. And List of counties in ND in 2015 Projection
• 67,158 population in 2016 Projection from GeoLytics in New Jersey. Ross Degenstein (talk) --208.107.212.115 (talk) 13:27, 16 January 2012 (UTC)