Difference between revisions of "Utah v. Evans"

Revision as of 19:42, May 22, 2009

Utah v. Evans, 182 F. Supp. 2d 1165 (2001) is the leading court case about the use of Hot-Deck Imputation in the census. After the use of Hot-Deck techniques in the 2000 census, one of Utah's congressional seats was appointed to North Carolina. Utah challenged this, on the grounds that Hot-Deck Imputation is a form of sampling, and "violated various statutory provisions and the Constitution."

The District Court for the District of Utah, Central Division stated "We begin by noting that section 195 does not preclude the Census Bureau from the use of every type of statistical methodology in arriving at apportionment figures during a decennial census. Instead, it prohibits only "the use of the statistical method known as 'sampling.'"

"[H]ot deck imputation is not sampling. Sampling is the selection of a subset of units from a larger population in such a way that each unit of the population has a known chance of selection. Sampling is used where a scientifically selected set of units can be used to represent the entire population from which they are drawn."

The Court concluded "that the Constitution does not prohibit the use of narrowly tailored statistical methodologies, such as hot deck imputation, for the purpose of improving the accuracy of the decennial census and furthering "the constitutional goal of equal representation."