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How Google Street View Can Guess Your Income

Google Street View
Any guesses about the owners of these cars in downtown Medford?

We get skads of information from the federal census every ten years: how many people live in the United States, where they live, how much money they make, and much more. 

But that's every ten years, and it is a gigantic undertaking.  It is augmented in non-census years by the less comprehensive, but still expensive, American Community Survey (ACS).

Couldn't we use other, available information to come up with more frequent and cheaper data on people?  The answer appears to be yes, especially if we use Google Street View to view cars and trucks and make some assumptions about their owners. 

Timnit Gebru at Stanford University led a team that examined the viability of such a process.  She joins us to explain how the research unfolded.  
 

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Geoffrey Riley is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and has hosted the Jefferson Exchange on JPR since 2009. He's been a broadcaster in the Rogue Valley for more than 35 years, working in both television and radio.
April Ehrlich is an editor and reporter at Oregon Public Broadcasting. Prior to joining OPB, she was a news host and regional reporter at Jefferson Public Radio.