Wisconsin v. City of New York, 517 U.S. 1, 9 (1996)

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Cite as: 517 U. S. 1 (1996)

Opinion of the Court

at the next step—the "capture" stage—one would conduct a fairly quick count of the entire patch, making sure to record both the number of pumpkins counted in the entire patch and the number of pumpkins counted in the selected section. Let us imagine that this stage results in a count of 10,000 pumpkins for the entire patch and 1,000 pumpkins for the selected section. Next, at the "recapture" stage, one would perform an exacting count of the number of pumpkins in the selected section. Let us assume that we now count 1,100 pumpkins in that section. By comparing the results of the "capture" phase and the results of the "recapture" phase for the selected section, it is possible to estimate that approximately 100 pumpkins actually in the patch were missed for every 1,000 counted at the "capture" phase. Extrapolating this data to the count for the entire patch, one would conclude that the actual number of pumpkins in the patch is 11,000.

In the context of the census, the initial enumeration of the entire population (the "capture") would be followed by the postenumeration survey (PES) (the "recapture") of certain representative geographical areas. The Bureau would then compare the results of the PES to the results of the initial enumeration for those areas targeted by the PES, in order to determine a rate of error in those areas for the initial enumeration (i. e., the rate at which the initial enumeration undercounted people in those areas). That rate of error would be extrapolated to the entire population, and thus would be used to statistically adjust the results of the initial enumeration.

The URS thought that the PES also held some promise for correcting the differential undercount. The PES would be conducted through the use of a system called post-stratification. Thus, each person counted through the PES would be placed into one, and only one, of over 1,000 post-strata defined by five categories: geography; age; sex; status

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