Seek is set up as a workspace with a Display Panel on the left and a Control Panel on the right.

Your selection of regions and data via the Control Panel determines the presentation of data in the Display Panel. To use the Table view, you must first select regions and data.*

*Note that if you’ve already selected regions and data in another view, your selections will carry over. You can always change or add to your selections by returning to the Regions and Data modals in the Control Panel.

The Table view is one of four different views - or ways of looking at your data and region selections. The others are Map, Distribution, and Relationships.

The Table view is ideal when you want a detailed look at the data in your selections since it presents data in as close to a raw form as possible.

You can scroll vertically and horizontally to quickly scan multiple indicators for multiple geographies and get a sense of the overall size and scope of specific datasets.

Several features in the Table view will help you make sense of the information.

In Seek, a comparison is when you compare larger areas (ZIP codes, places, counties) to each other and/or to smaller areas (census tracts, block groups) within the larger area. In the Table view, you might query data for a larger region, such as a county or a place, and then drill down into smaller regions, such as census tracts or block groups. You can include comparison regions as separate rows in your table by checking the box Include comparisons in the Control Panel. This will allow you to visually compare values; however, comparisons are not included in the calculations that produce descriptive statistics for your query, such as mean, median, and mode.

Descriptive statistics like mean, median, mode, and standard deviation summarize the characteristics of the data you’ve selected. You can turn them on by checking the box Show descriptive statistics in the Control Panel. Learn more about these statistical concepts and how you can use them in spatial analysis in our article: Learn More: Insights from Statistics.

One of the most useful features for quickly spotting insights or patterns in the data is the ability to highlight outliers in the table. In the Control Panel, check the box Highlight outliers to show regions where values are significantly higher or lower (more than three standard deviations) than the median value in the data set or sample.

Sort the table from high to low or vice versa based on specific indicators by clicking the up or down arrow to the right of the indicator’s name. This can be especially helpful when you want to see all of the outliers in a particular data set or sample grouped together (as shown above).

Get detailed information about an indicator by clicking on the indicator name in the top row of the table.

Details include:

Get detailed information about a region by clicking on that region’s name in the Region column (far left). In addition to viewing the region on a map (which is helpful in case you haven’t memorized every census tract!), you can also analyze trends for that region on specific indicators with a percent change calculator and time series chart.
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