My colleague pulled a report from the comparison report tool in September '22, it involved using a national layer of 1,126 various polygons and the only variable used was "2020 Total Population (U.S. Census)". Now in March I have attempted to pull an identical report but with an updated version of the 1,126 polygons (knowing that roughly 95% of the polygons had not changed shape and should yield identical results to the September report). What we found was that more than half of the results appear to have changed, and in same cases rather drastically (thousands in many cases, and in the case of NYC metro - millions).
Several of these polygons are the same shape as US Counties, and since the Census reports what these county's 2020 populations should be, we know that the September report pulled them accurately, while the same report from March is far different. This does not make since, considering the source of the variable we are using indicates it is NOT updated regularly (unlike certain ESRI layers), and dropping an identical polygon in September or March should result in the same population figure - *if this is not the case please inform us*!
In addition, as we began to scrutinize the process further, we found that what appears in the 'Table View' of the Comparison Reports tab (i.e. the table you see before exporting to Excel) was also completely different from what actually gets exported to Excel, making the entire process rather useless.
