Community Profiles User Guide

5. Working with Cards

Cards are the basic unit of the Community Profiles dashboard. Indicators, both vulnerabilities and assets, are shown in cards. We’ll show you how to interact with and interpret charts.

5.1. Reading Vizzes

Each card shows several visualizations about the same indicator. To understand this, let’s use poverty rate as an example.

First, we always show the overall statistic in the latest data year for the area you chose. For poverty rate, you’ll see the overall poverty rate for your selected area right under the card name.

Second, we usually show that same overall stat over time. When it makes sense, we’ll compare that trend to context geographies, like the county average (for the county your area falls in), the metro region average, and the state average.

Next, we’ll show more charts that break down the indicator into subgroups. For example, with poverty rate, we show the rate by race and by age group. To understand poverty rate by race, think about the example of the Asian poverty rate. This is calculated by taking the number of Asians in poverty as a percentage of all Asians.

You can show these additional charts by clicking “More Details” at the bottom of the card.

For asset data, the card will show how many of that asset type are located in your selected area (out of the total count of that asset type in our database).

We’ll also show a table of all those assets. The table will show the asset’s name and one attribute. You can use these columns to sort the table. See “Exporting Cards” below to learn to export this table as a CSV file.

5.2. Moving Cards

You can rearrange your dashboard by moving cards. Grab the blue bar at the top of each card. Click and drag to drop it somewhere else. To keep things organized, we limit where you can place your cards. You can not move the map card.

5.3. Adding and Removing Cards

Add cards through the “Add Data” menu.
To remove a card, open that’s cards menu (upper right) and select “Delete This Tile”

To add a card, click the “Add Data” icon and choose a new indicator for your dashboard. New cards appear at the top of your dashboard.

Learn more about adding data.

To remove cards, open the card menu and select “Delete This Tile”. That card will be removed, and another will slide in to takes its place. You can always add the card again through the “Add Data” menu.

5.4. Exporting Cards

Export as CSV through the card menu.

You can export the data in each card as a CSV file, which you can open in Excel. Open the card’s menu and select “Download This Data”. We’ll create a CSV file with the data from all the vizzes in the card (every data year available for every geography and subgroup).

We are exploring ways to export cards as an image, but in the meantime you can use a screen capture tool (shift-cmd-4 on Mac, Snipper tool on PC) to save your card as an image.

5.5. Mapping Cards

Map that data in a card through that cards menu.

The statistics you see in a card can be shown on the map. Open the card’s menu and select “Map This Data”.

Statistics in the card only pertains to the area you selected when you create your profile. However, when you map the data, we’ll show statistics for the entire region (where possible). This helps put the data for your area in context. Map data can be broken into subgroups just like card data. Find this option in the map menu.

You can only map one vulnerability at a time. Every time you map a vulnerability card, it will replace the vulnerability card that is currently being mapped. For example, you can’t map unemployment rate and poverty at the same time.

You can, however, map many asset types at once. All asset cards will automatically add their data to the map. For example, you can see traditional public schools, charter schools, and job training centers on the map simultaneously.

Learn more abouts maps.

5.6. Data Sources

Every card will list the source of the data, along with information about its importance and limitations. This is called metadata.

To see the metadata for a card, open the card’s menu and select “About This Data”. Then scroll through this text to learn more.