Doing data science

.title[
# Doing data science
]
.subtitle[
## <br><br> Data Science in a Box
]
.author[
### <a href="https://datasciencebox.org/">datasciencebox.org</a>
]

---

layout: true
  
<div class="my-footer">
<span>
<a href="https://datasciencebox.org" target="_blank">datasciencebox.org</a>
</span>
</div>

---

# What's in a data analysis?

---

## Five core activities of data analysis

1. Stating and refining the question
1. Exploring the data
1. Building formal statistical models
1. Interpreting the results
1. Communicating the results

.footnote[
Roger D. Peng and Elizabeth Matsui. "The Art of Data Science." A Guide for Anyone Who Works with Data. Skybrude Consulting, LLC (2015).
]

---

# Stating and refining the question

---

## Six types of questions

1. **Descriptive:** summarize a characteristic of a set of data
1. **Exploratory:** analyze to see if there are patterns, trends, or relationships between variables (hypothesis generating)
1. **Inferential:** analyze patterns, trends, or relationships in representative data from a population
1. **Predictive:** make predictions for individuals or groups of individuals
1. **Causal:** whether changing one factor will change another factor, on average, in a population
1. **Mechanistic:** explore "how" as opposed to whether

.footnote[
Jeffery T. Leek and Roger D. Peng. "What is the question?." Science 347.6228 (2015): 1314-1315.
]

---

## Ex: COVID-19 and Vitamin D

1. **Descriptive:** frequency of hospitalisations due to COVID-19 in a set of data collected from a group of individuals
--

1. **Exploratory:** examine relationships between a range of dietary factors and COVID-19 hospitalisations
--

1. **Inferential:** examine whether any relationship between taking Vitamin D supplements and COVID-19 hospitalisations found in the sample hold for the population at large

--
1. **Predictive:** what types of people will take Vitamin D supplements during the next year

--
1. **Causal:** whether people with COVID-19 who were randomly assigned to take Vitamin D supplements or those who were not are hospitalised

--
1. **Mechanistic:** how increased vitamin D intake leads to a reduction in the number of viral illnesses

---

## Questions to data science problems

- Do you have appropriate data to answer your question?
- Do you have information on confounding variables?
- Was the data you're working with collected in a way that introduces bias?

.question[
Suppose I want to estimate the average number of children in households in Edinburgh. I conduct a survey at an elementary school in Edinburgh and ask students at this elementary school how many children, including themselves, live in their house. Then, I take the average of the responses. Is this a biased or an unbiased estimate of the number of children in households in Edinburgh? If biased, will the value be an overestimate or underestimate?
]

---

# Exploratory data analysis

---

## Checklist

- Formulate your question
- Read in your data
- Check the dimensions
- Look at the top and the bottom of your data
- Validate with at least one external data source
- Make a plot
- Try the easy solution first

---

## Formulate your question

- Consider scope:
  - Are air pollution levels higher on the east coast than on the west coast?
  - Are hourly ozone levels on average higher in New York City than they are in Los Angeles?
  - Do counties in the eastern United States have higher ozone levels than counties in the western United States?
- Most importantly: "Do I have the right data to answer this question?"

---

## Read in your data

- Place your data in a folder called `data`
- Read it into R with `read_csv()` or friends (`read_delim()`, `read_excel()`, etc.)

```r
library(readxl)
fav_food <- read_excel("data/favourite-food.xlsx")
fav_food
```

```
## # A tibble: 5 × 6
##   `Student ID` `Full Name`    favourite.food mealPlan AGE   SES  
##          <dbl> <chr>          <chr>          <chr>    <chr> <chr>
## 1            1 Sunil Huffmann Strawberry yo… Lunch o… 4     High 
## 2            2 Barclay Lynn   French fries   Lunch o… 5     Midd…
## 3            3 Jayendra Lyne  N/A            Breakfa… 7     Low  
## 4            4 Leon Rossini   Anchovies      Lunch o… 99999 Midd…
## 5            5 Chidiegwu Dun… Pizza          Breakfa… five  High
```

---

## `clean_names()`

If the variable names are malformatted, use `janitor::clean_names()`

```r
library(janitor)
fav_food %>% clean_names()  
```

```
## # A tibble: 5 × 6
##   student_id full_name       favourite_food meal_plan age   ses  
##        <dbl> <chr>           <chr>          <chr>     <chr> <chr>
## 1          1 Sunil Huffmann  Strawberry yo… Lunch on… 4     High 
## 2          2 Barclay Lynn    French fries   Lunch on… 5     Midd…
## 3          3 Jayendra Lyne   N/A            Breakfas… 7     Low  
## 4          4 Leon Rossini    Anchovies      Lunch on… 99999 Midd…
## 5          5 Chidiegwu Dunk… Pizza          Breakfas… five  High
```

---

## Case study: NYC Squirrels!

- [The Squirrel Census](https://www.thesquirrelcensus.com/) is a multimedia science, design, and storytelling project focusing on the Eastern gray (*Sciurus carolinensis*). They count squirrels and present their findings to the public.
- This table contains squirrel data for each of the 3,023 sightings, including location coordinates, age, primary and secondary fur color, elevation, activities, communications, and interactions between squirrels and with humans.

```r
#install_github("mine-cetinkaya-rundel/nycsquirrels18")
library(nycsquirrels18)
```

---

## Locate the codebook

[mine-cetinkaya-rundel.github.io/nycsquirrels18/reference/squirrels.html](https://mine-cetinkaya-rundel.github.io/nycsquirrels18/reference/squirrels.html)

## Check the dimensions

```r
dim(squirrels)
```

```
## [1] 3023   35
```

---

## Look at the top...

```r
squirrels %>% head()
```

```
## # A tibble: 6 × 35
##    long   lat unique_squirrel_id hectare shift date      
##   <dbl> <dbl> <chr>              <chr>   <chr> <date>    
## 1 -74.0  40.8 13A-PM-1014-04     13A     PM    2018-10-14
## 2 -74.0  40.8 15F-PM-1010-06     15F     PM    2018-10-10
## 3 -74.0  40.8 19C-PM-1018-02     19C     PM    2018-10-18
## 4 -74.0  40.8 21B-AM-1019-04     21B     AM    2018-10-19
## 5 -74.0  40.8 23A-AM-1018-02     23A     AM    2018-10-18
## 6 -74.0  40.8 38H-PM-1012-01     38H     PM    2018-10-12
## # … with 29 more variables: hectare_squirrel_number <dbl>,
## #   age <chr>, primary_fur_color <chr>,
## #   highlight_fur_color <chr>,
## #   combination_of_primary_and_highlight_color <chr>,
## #   color_notes <chr>, location <chr>,
## #   above_ground_sighter_measurement <chr>,
## #   specific_location <chr>, running <lgl>, chasing <lgl>, …
```

---

## ...and the bottom

```r
squirrels %>% tail()
```

```
## # A tibble: 6 × 35
##    long   lat unique_squirrel_id hectare shift date      
##   <dbl> <dbl> <chr>              <chr>   <chr> <date>    
## 1 -74.0  40.8 6D-PM-1020-01      06D     PM    2018-10-20
## 2 -74.0  40.8 21H-PM-1018-01     21H     PM    2018-10-18
## 3 -74.0  40.8 31D-PM-1006-02     31D     PM    2018-10-06
## 4 -74.0  40.8 37B-AM-1018-04     37B     AM    2018-10-18
## 5 -74.0  40.8 21C-PM-1006-01     21C     PM    2018-10-06
## 6 -74.0  40.8 7G-PM-1018-04      07G     PM    2018-10-18
## # … with 29 more variables: hectare_squirrel_number <dbl>,
## #   age <chr>, primary_fur_color <chr>,
## #   highlight_fur_color <chr>,
## #   combination_of_primary_and_highlight_color <chr>,
## #   color_notes <chr>, location <chr>,
## #   above_ground_sighter_measurement <chr>,
## #   specific_location <chr>, running <lgl>, chasing <lgl>, …
```
]

---

## Validate with at least one external data source

```
## # A tibble: 3,023 × 2
##     long   lat
##    <dbl> <dbl>
##  1 -74.0  40.8
##  2 -74.0  40.8
##  3 -74.0  40.8
##  4 -74.0  40.8
##  5 -74.0  40.8
##  6 -74.0  40.8
##  7 -74.0  40.8
##  8 -74.0  40.8
##  9 -74.0  40.8
## 10 -74.0  40.8
## 11 -74.0  40.8
## 12 -74.0  40.8
## 13 -74.0  40.8
## 14 -74.0  40.8
## 15 -74.0  40.8
## # … with 3,008 more rows
```
]
.pull-right[
<img src="img/central-park-coords.png" width="100%" style="display: block; margin: auto;" />
]

---

## Make a plot

```r
ggplot(squirrels, aes(x = long, y = lat)) +
  geom_point(alpha = 0.2)
```

.pull-left-wide[
**Hypothesis:** There will be a higher density of sightings on the perimeter than inside the park.
]

---

## Try the easy solution first

.panel[.panel-name[Plot]
<img src="u2-d17-doing-data-science_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-11-1.png" width="60%" style="display: block; margin: auto;" />
]

```r
squirrels <- squirrels %>%
  separate(hectare, into = c("NS", "EW"), sep = 2, remove = FALSE) %>%
  mutate(where = if_else(NS %in% c("01", "42") | EW %in% c("A", "I"), "perimeter", "inside"))

ggplot(squirrels, aes(x = long, y = lat, color = where)) +
  geom_point(alpha = 0.2)
```
]

]

---

## Then go deeper...

.panel[.panel-name[Plot]
<img src="u2-d17-doing-data-science_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-12-1.png" width="60%" style="display: block; margin: auto;" />
]

```r
hectare_counts <- squirrels %>%
  group_by(hectare) %>%
  summarise(n = n())

hectare_centroids <- squirrels %>%
  group_by(hectare) %>%
  summarise(
    centroid_x = mean(long),
    centroid_y = mean(lat)
  )

squirrels %>%
  left_join(hectare_counts, by = "hectare") %>%
  left_join(hectare_centroids, by = "hectare") %>%
  ggplot(aes(x = centroid_x, y = centroid_y, color = n)) +
  geom_hex()
```
]

]

---

## The squirrel is staring at me!

```r
squirrels %>%
  filter(str_detect(other_interactions, "star")) %>%
  select(shift, age, other_interactions)
```

```
## # A tibble: 11 × 3
##   shift age   other_interactions                                 
##   <chr> <chr> <chr>                                              
## 1 AM    Adult staring at us                                      
## 2 PM    Adult he took 2 steps then turned and stared at me       
## 3 PM    Adult stared                                             
## 4 PM    Adult stared                                             
## 5 PM    Adult stared                                             
## 6 PM    Adult stared & then went back up tree—then ran to differ…
## # … with 5 more rows
```

---

## Communicating for your audience

- Avoid: Jargon, uninterpreted results, lengthy output
- Pay attention to: Organization, presentation, flow
- Don't forget about: Code style, coding best practices, meaningful commits
- Be open to: Suggestions, feedback, taking (calculated) risks