Add-on datasets
Figures published for a county, a ZIP code or a state rather than measured inside an area, such as registered boats by county, and how the product reads them through an area's block groups, what the coverage lines mean, and how scored datasets rank counties.
What this is for
Most of the product's figures are measured inside the area you draw. Some figures that a business needs are published only for a larger geography, a county, a ZIP code or a state, and nothing finer exists. How many boats are registered in a county is one, and the number of a kind of license, permit or vehicle is often another. An add-on dataset holds such figures and reads them for your area in the most honest way available, by the share of the county that your area captures.
Datasets are switched on for an organization that asks for them, and an organization can also have its own data loaded as a dataset of its own. The Overview lists every dataset by name, including the ones the organization does not have, so that a reader knows the add-on exists.
Where to find it
The dataset cards are on the Overview tab, under County momentum. A dataset the organization has shows its figures. One it does not have shows a line saying it is an add-on and to ask for it. The side panel's figures do not include datasets. Datasets are part of the Pro and Team plans and are switched on per organization.
How a county figure becomes a figure for an area
Each block group's share of its county's homes, people and land is known from the decennial census. When a dataset holds a count for a county, such as 12,000 registered boats, the product gives your area the share of that count that matches the share of the county's homes your area captures. When it holds a rate, such as boats per household, the area's figure is the mean of the rates of the counties it touches, weighted by the homes captured in each, and never a sum. The card says how many source areas the figure came from and what share the largest holds, and when one county holds nine tenths or more, its first line says that the figures are that county's applied to the area, because that is what they are.
An area outside the dataset's coverage reads The dataset does not cover this area, never zero, because a missing figure is a gap in the data and not a fact about the place.
Scored datasets
Some datasets rank every county in the country on a score built from several measured rates. Each factor is the county's national percentile on one rate, the score is a weighted mean of the factors the county has, with the weights renormalized to those, and the scores are ranked again to run from 0 to 100. The card shows each factor's percentile and the rate behind it, and a coverage figure says how much of the score's weight had data. A factor a county cannot have, such as visits to a lake where there is none, is missing rather than zero and drops out of the mean. The boating market scores, for example, read registrations, documented vessels, the boat trade and storage, ramps and parking, water and shoreline, marinas, lake visits, seasonal homes, the owner pool within a ninety minute drive and summer vessel traffic.
Your own data
An organization's own figures by county, ZIP code, place or metro, such as its sales territories' results or a list of permits, can be loaded as a dataset and read the same way, so that they appear beside the Census figures for every area the organization draws. Ask through the contact address on the pricing page, and the data stays private to the organization.
An example
An organization with the Florida registered vessels dataset drawing a ten minute drive time in Auburndale, Florida, reads the boats registered in Polk County apportioned to the drive time by the share of the county's homes it captures, with the card saying that Polk holds the whole figure. Drawing a county-line drive time that reaches into Osceola reads the two counties' figures combined by the homes captured in each, with the card saying how much each contributed. Drawing the same drive time in Georgia reads that the dataset does not cover the area.
Things to know
An apportioned figure assumes that the county's boats, permits or whatever the dataset holds are spread over the county the way its homes are. That is a reasonable first guess and not a measurement, and the card's coverage line is there so that a reader knows how much of the figure rests on it.
Datasets are refreshed on their own schedules, usually yearly, and each card names its source and its year.
A dataset on a geography other than counties, such as ZIP codes, is read the same way through the block groups' shares of that geography.
Related pages
The Overview tab holds the cards. What MarketGround measures explains block groups and apportioning, and the methodology page sets out the arithmetic and the scored datasets' factors.