Project 1: World Progress¶

Your first and last name: ...

Project parter's first and last name: ...

Partners. Undergraduate students may work with one other partner. Both of you are required to submit the project. Please designate your partner's name so we know with whom you worked.

In this project, you'll explore data from Gapminder.org, a website dedicated to providing a fact-based view of the world and how it has changed. That site includes several data visualizations and presentations, but also publishes the raw data that we will use in this project to recreate and extend some of their most famous visualizations.

The Gapminder website collects data from many sources and compiles them into tables that describe many countries around the world. All of the data they aggregate are published in the Systema Globalis. Their goal is "to compile all public statistics; Social, Economic and Environmental; into a comparable total dataset." All data sets in this project are copied directly from the Systema Globalis without any changes.

This project is dedicated to Hans Rosling (1948-2017), who championed the use of data to understand and prioritize global development challenges.

Credit: This project has been adapted from Berkeley's Data8 course.

Logistics¶

Deadline. This project is due at 11:59pm on Friday 2/21. Projects will be accepted up to 2 days (48 hours) late; a project submitted less than 24 hours after the deadline will receive 2/3 credit, a project submitted between 24 and 48 hours after the deadline will receive 1/3 credit, and a project submitted 48 hours or more after the deadline will receive no credit. It's much better to be early than late, so start working now.

Checkpoint. For full credit, you must also complete the first 8 questions and submit them by 11:59pm on Friday 2/14. You can change your answers before the final submission.

Partners. Undergraduate students may work with one other partner. Both of you are required to submit the project. Please designate your partner's name so we know with whom you worked.

Rules. Don't share your code with anybody but your partner. You are welcome to discuss questions with other students, but don't share the answers. The experience of solving the problems in this project will prepare you for exams (and life). If someone asks you for the answer, resist! Instead, you can demonstrate how you would solve a similar problem.

Support. You are not alone! Come to office hours, post on Piazza, and talk to your classmates. If you want to ask about the details of your solution to a problem, make a private Piazza post and the staff will respond. If you're ever feeling overwhelmed or don't know how to make progress, be sure to come to office hours and speak to a TF, ULA, or instructor.

Advice. Develop your answers incrementally. To perform a complicated table manipulation, break it up into steps, perform each step on a different line, give a new name to each result, and check that each intermediate result is what you expect. You can add any additional names or functions you want to the provided cells. Make sure that you are using distinct and meaningful variable names throughout the notebook. Along that line, DO NOT reuse the variable names that we use when we grade your answers. For example, in Question 1 of the Global Poverty section, we ask you to assign an answer to latest. Do not reassign the variable name latest to anything else in your notebook.

You never have to use just one line in this project or any others. Use intermediate variables and multiple lines as much as you would like!

To get started, load datascience, numpy, and plots.

In [ ]:
from datascience import *
import numpy as np

%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plots
plots.style.use('fivethirtyeight')

import warnings
warnings.filterwarnings("ignore")


1. Global Population Growth¶

The global population of humans reached 1 billion around 1800, 3 billion around 1960, and 7 billion around 2011. The potential impact of exponential population growth has concerned scientists, economists, and politicians alike.

The UN Population Division estimates that the world population will likely continue to grow throughout the 21st century, but at a slower rate, perhaps reaching 11 billion by 2100. However, the UN does not rule out scenarios of more extreme growth.

In this section, we will examine some of the factors that influence population growth and how they are changing around the world.

The first table we will consider is the total population of each country over time. Run the cell below.

In [ ]:
population = Table.read_table('population.csv')
population.show(3)


Note: The population csv file can also be found here. The data for this project was downloaded in February, 2017.

In the population table, the geo column contains three-letter codes established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in the Alpha-3 standard. We will begin by taking a close look at Bangladesh. Inspect the standard to find the 3-letter code for Bangladesh.

Question 1.1. Create a table called b_pop that has two columns labeled time and population_total. The first column should contain the years from 1970 through 2015 (including both 1970 and 2015) and the second should contain the population of Bangladesh in each of those years.

In [ ]:
b_pop = ...
b_pop


Run the following cell to create a table called b_five that has the population of Bangladesh every five years. At a glance, it appears that the population of Bangladesh has been growing quickly indeed!

In [ ]:
b_pop.set_format('population_total', NumberFormatter)

fives = np.arange(1970, 2016, 5) # 1970, 1975, 1980, ...
b_five = b_pop.sort('time').where('time', are.contained_in(fives))
b_five


Question 1.2. Assign b_1970_through_2010 to a table that has the same columns as b_five and has one row for every five years from 1970 through 2010 (but not 2015). Then, use that table to assign initial to an array that contains the population for every five year interval from 1970 to 2010. Finally, assign changed to an array that contains the population for every five year interval from 1975 to 2015.

Hint: You may find the exclude method to be helpful (Docs).

In [ ]:
b_1970_through_2010 = ...
initial = ...
changed = ...


We have provided the code below that uses b_1970_through_2010, initial, and changed in order to add a column to the table called annual_growth. Don't worry about the calculation of the growth rates.

If you are interested in how we came up with the formula for growth rates, consult the growth rates section of the textbook.

In [ ]:
b_five_growth = b_1970_through_2010.with_column('annual_growth', (changed/initial)**0.2-1)
b_five_growth.set_format('annual_growth', PercentFormatter)


While the population has grown every five years since 1970, the annual growth rate decreased dramatically from 1985 to 2005. Let's look at some other information in order to develop a possible explanation. Run the next cell to load three additional tables of measurements about countries over time.

In [ ]:
life_expectancy = Table.read_table('life_expectancy.csv')


The life_expectancy table contains a statistic that is often used to measure how long people live, called life expectancy at birth. This number, for a country in a given year, does not measure how long babies born in that year are expected to live. Instead, it measures how long someone would live, on average, if the mortality conditions in that year persisted throughout their lifetime. These "mortality conditions" describe what fraction of people at each age survived the year. So, it is a way of measuring the proportion of people that are staying alive, aggregated over different age groups in the population.

Run the following cells below to see life_expectancy, child_mortality, and fertility. Refer back to these tables as they will be helpful for answering further questions!

In [ ]:
life_expectancy

In [ ]:
child_mortality

In [ ]:
fertility


Question 1.3. Perhaps population is growing more slowly because people aren't living as long. Use the life_expectancy table to draw a line graph with the years 1970 and later on the horizontal axis that shows how the life expectancy at birth has changed in Bangladesh.

In [ ]:
...


Question 1.4. Assuming everything else stays the same, does the graph above help directly explain why the population growth rate decreased from 1985 to 2010 in Bangladesh? Why or why not? What happened in Bangladesh in 1991, and does that event explain the change in population growth rate?

The fertility table contains a statistic that is often used to measure how many babies are being born, the total fertility rate. This number describes the number of children a woman would have in her lifetime, on average, if the current rates of birth by age of the mother persisted throughout her child bearing years, assuming she survived through age 49.

Question 1.5. Write a function fertility_over_time that takes the Alpha-3 code of a country and a start year. It returns a two-column table with labels "Year" and "Children per woman" that can be used to generate a line chart of the country's fertility rate each year, starting at the start year. The plot should include the start year and all later years that appear in the fertility table.

Then, in the next cell, call your fertility_over_time function on the Alpha-3 code for Bangladesh and the year 1970 in order to plot how Bangladesh's fertility rate has changed since 1970. Note that the function fertility_over_time should not return the plot itself The expression that draws the line plot is provided for you; please don't change it.

In [ ]:
def fertility_over_time(country, start):
"""Create a two-column table that describes a country's total fertility rate each year."""
country_fertility = ...
country_fertility_after_start = ...
...

In [ ]:
bangladesh_code = ...
fertility_over_time(bangladesh_code, 1970).plot(0, 1) # You should *not* change this line.


Question 1.6. Assuming everything else stays the same, does the graph above help directly explain why the population growth rate decreased from 1985 to 2010 in Bangladesh? Why or why not?

It has been observed that lower fertility rates are often associated with lower child mortality rates. The link has been attributed to family planning: if parents can expect that their children will all survive into adulthood, then they will choose to have fewer children. We can see if this association is evident in Bangladesh by plotting the relationship between total fertility rate and child mortality rate per 1000 children.

Question 1.7. Using both the fertility and child_mortality tables, draw a scatter diagram with one point for each year, starting with 1970, that has Bangladesh's total fertility on the horizontal axis and its child mortality on the vertical axis.

The expression that draws the scatter diagram is provided for you; please don't change it. Instead, create a table called post_1969_fertility_and_child_mortality with the appropriate column labels and data in order to generate the chart correctly. Use the label "Children per woman" to describe total fertility and the label "Child deaths per 1000 born" to describe child mortality.

In [ ]:
bgd_fertility = ...
bgd_child_mortality = ...
fertility_and_child_mortality = ...
post_1969_fertility_and_child_mortality = ...
post_1969_fertility_and_child_mortality.scatter('Children per woman', 'Child deaths per 1000 born') # You should *not* change this line.


Question 1.8. In one or two sentences, describe the association (if any) that is illustrated by this scatter diagram. Does the diagram show that reduced child mortality causes parents to choose to have fewer children?

The World¶

The change observed in Bangladesh since 1970 can also be observed in many other developing countries: health services improve, life expectancy increases, and child mortality decreases. At the same time, the fertility rate often plummets, and so the population growth rate decreases despite increasing longevity.

Run the cell below to generate two overlaid histograms, one for 1960 and one for 2010, that show the distributions of total fertility rates for these two years among all 201 countries in the fertility table.

In [ ]:
Table().with_columns(
'1960', fertility.where('time', 1960).column(2),
'2010', fertility.where('time', 2010).column(2)
).hist(bins=np.arange(0, 10, 0.5), unit='child')
_ = plots.xlabel('Children per woman')
_ = plots.xticks(np.arange(10))


Question 1.9. Assign fertility_statements to a list of the numbers of each statement below that can be correctly inferred from these histograms.

1. About the same number of countries had a fertility rate between 3.5 and 4.5 in both 1960 and 2010.
2. In 2010, about 40% of countries had a fertility rate between 1.5 and 2 (inclusive).
3. In 1960, fewer than 20% of countries had a fertility rate below 3.
4. More countries had a fertility rate above 3 in 1960 than in 2010.
5. At least half of countries had a fertility rate between 5 and 8 (inclusive) in 1960.
6. At least half of countries had a fertility rate below 3 in 2010.
In [ ]:
fertility_statements = ...


Question 1.10. Draw a line plot of the world population from 1800 through 2005. The world population is the sum of all the country's populations.

In [ ]:
...


Question 1.11. Create a function stats_for_year that takes a year and returns a table of statistics. The table it returns should have four columns: geo, population_total, children_per_woman_total_fertility, and child_mortality_under_5_per_1000_born. Each row should contain one Alpha-3 country code and three statistics: population, fertility rate, and child mortality for that year from the population, fertility and child_mortality tables. Only include rows for which all three statistics are available for the country and year.

In addition, restrict the result to country codes that appears in big_50, an array of the 50 most populous countries in 2010. This restriction will speed up computations later in the project.

In [ ]:
# We first create a population table that only includes the
# 50 countries with the largest 2010 populations. We focus on
# these 50 countries only so that plotting later will run faster.
big_50 = population.where('time', 2010).sort(2, descending=True).take(np.arange(50)).column('geo')
population_of_big_50 = population.where('time', are.above(1959)).where('geo', are.contained_in(big_50))

def stats_for_year(year):
"""Return a table of the stats for each country that year."""
p = population_of_big_50.where('time', year).drop('time')
f = fertility.where('time', year).drop('time')
c = child_mortality.where('time', year).drop('time')
...


Try calling your function stats_for_year on any year between 1960 and 2010 in the cell below. Try to understand the output of stats_for_year.

In [ ]:
...


Question 1.12. Create a table called pop_by_decade with two columns called decade and population. It has a row for each year since 1960 that starts a decade. The population column contains the total population of all countries included in the result of stats_for_year(year) for the first year of the decade. For example, 1960 is the first year of the 1960's decade. You should see that these countries contain most of the world's population.

Hint: One approach is to define a function pop_for_year that computes this total population, then apply it to the decade column. The stats_for_year function from the previous question may be useful here.

Note: The pop_by_decade cell is directly below the cell containing the helper function pop_for_year. This is where you will generate the pop_by_decade table!

In [ ]:
def pop_for_year(year):
...

In [ ]:
decades = Table().with_column('decade', np.arange(1960, 2011, 10))



The countries table describes various characteristics of countries. The country column contains the same codes as the geo column in each of the other data tables (population, fertility, and child_mortality). The world_6region column classifies each country into a region of the world. Run the cell below to inspect the data.

In [ ]:
countries = Table.read_table('countries.csv').where('country', are.contained_in(population.group('geo').column(0)))
countries.select('country', 'name', 'world_6region')


Question 1.13. Create a table called region_counts that has two columns, region and count. It should describe the count of how many countries in each region appear in the result of stats_for_year(1960). For example, one row would have south_asia as its world_6region value and an integer as its count value: the number of large South Asian countries for which we have population, fertility, and child mortality numbers from 1960.

In [ ]:
region_counts = ...
region_counts


The following scatter diagram compares total fertility rate and child mortality rate for each country in 1960. The area of each dot represents the population of the country, and the color represents its region of the world. Run the cell. Do you think you can identify any of the dots?

In [ ]:
from functools import lru_cache as cache

# This cache annotation makes sure that if the same year
# is passed as an argument twice, the work of computing
# the result is only carried out once.
@cache(None)
def stats_relabeled(year):
"""Relabeled and cached version of stats_for_year."""
return stats_for_year(year).relabeled(2, 'Children per woman').relabeled(3, 'Child deaths per 1000 born')

def fertility_vs_child_mortality(year):
"""Draw a color scatter diagram comparing child mortality and fertility."""
with_region = stats_relabeled(year).join('geo', countries.select('country', 'world_6region'), 'country')
with_region.scatter(2, 3, sizes=1, colors=4, s=500)
plots.xlim(0,10)
plots.ylim(-50, 500)
plots.title(year)

fertility_vs_child_mortality(1960)


Question 1.14. Assign scatter_statements to a list of the numbers of each statement below that can be inferred from this scatter diagram for 1960.

1. The europe_central_asia region had the highest child mortality rate.
2. The lowest child mortality rate of any country was from an east_asian_pacific country.
3. Most countries had a fertility rate above 5.
4. There was an association between child mortality and fertility.
5. The two largest countries by population also had the two highest child mortality rate.
In [ ]:
scatter_statements = ...


The result of the cell below is interactive. Drag the slider to the right to see how countries have changed over time. You'll find that the great divide between so-called "Western" and "developing" countries that existed in the 1960's has nearly disappeared. This shift in fertility rates is the reason that the global population is expected to grow more slowly in the 21st century than it did in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In [ ]:
import ipywidgets as widgets

# This part takes a few minutes to run because it
# computes 55 tables in advance: one for each year.
Table().with_column('Year', np.arange(1960, 2016)).apply(stats_relabeled, 'Year')

_ = widgets.interact(fertility_vs_child_mortality,
year=widgets.IntSlider(min=1960, max=2015, value=1960))


Now is a great time to take a break and watch the same data presented by Hans Rosling in a 2010 TEDx talk with smoother animation and witty commentary.

2. Global Poverty¶

In 1800, 85% of the world's 1 billion people lived in extreme poverty, defined by the United Nations as "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information." A common measure of extreme poverty is a person living on less than \\$1.25 per day.

In 2018, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty was estimated to be 8%. Although the world rate of extreme poverty has declined consistently for hundreds of years, the number of people living in extreme poverty is still over 600 million. The United Nations recently adopted an ambitious goal: "By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere." In this section, we will examine extreme poverty trends around the world.

First, load the population and poverty rate by country and year and the country descriptions. While the population table has values for every recent year for many countries, the poverty table only includes certain years for each country in which a measurement of the rate of extreme poverty was available.

In [ ]:
population = Table.read_table('population.csv')
poverty.show(3)


Question 2.1. Assign latest_poverty to a three-column table with one row for each country that appears in the poverty table. The first column should contain the 3-letter code for the country. The second column should contain the most recent_poverty_total year for which an extreme poverty rate is available for the country. The third column should contain the poverty rate in that year. Do not change the last line, so that the labels of your table are set correctly.

Hint: think about how group works: it does a sequential search of the table (from top to bottom) and collects values in the array in the order in which they appear, and then applies a function to that array. The first function may be helpful, but you are not required to use it.

In [ ]:
def first(values):
return values.item(0)

latest_poverty = ...

latest_poverty.relabel(0, 'geo').relabel(1, 'time').relabel(2, 'poverty_percent') # You should *not* change this line.


Question 2.2. Using both latest_poverty and population, create a four-column table called recent_poverty_total with one row for each country in latest_poverty. The four columns should have the following labels and contents:

1. geo contains the 3-letter country code,
2. poverty_percent contains the most recent poverty percent,
3. population_total contains the population of the country in 2010,
4. poverty_total contains the number of people in poverty rounded to the nearest integer, based on the 2010 population and most recent poverty rate.
In [ ]:
poverty_and_pop = ...
recent_poverty_total = ...
recent_poverty_total


Question 2.3. Assuming that the poverty_total numbers in the recent_poverty_total table describe all people in 2010 living in extreme poverty, assign the name poverty_percent to the percentage of the world's 2010 population that were living in extreme poverty. You should find a number that is above the 2018 global estimate of 8%, since many country-specific poverty rates are older than 2018.

Hint: The sum of the population_total column in the recent_poverty_total table is not the world population, because only a subset of the world's countries have known poverty rates. Use the population table to compute the world's 2010 total population.

In [ ]:
poverty_percent = ...
poverty_percent


The countries table includes not only the name and region of countries, but also their positions on the globe.

In [ ]:
countries.select('country', 'name', 'world_4region', 'latitude', 'longitude')


Question 2.4. Using both countries and recent_poverty_total, create a five-column table called poverty_map with one row for every country in recent_poverty_total. The four columns should have the following labels and contents:

1. latitude contains the country's latitude,
2. longitude contains the country's longitude,
3. name contains the country's name,
4. region contains the country's region from the world_4region column of countries,
5. poverty_total contains the country's poverty total.
In [ ]:
poverty_map = ...
poverty_map


Run the cell below to draw a map of the world in which the areas of circles represent the number of people living in extreme poverty. Double-click on the map to zoom in.

In [ ]:
# It may take a few seconds to generate this map.
colors = {'africa': 'blue', 'europe': 'black', 'asia': 'red', 'americas': 'green'}
scaled = poverty_map.with_columns(
'poverty_total', 2e4 * poverty_map.column('poverty_total'),
'region', poverty_map.apply(colors.get, 'region')
)
Circle.map_table(scaled)


Although people live in extreme poverty throughout the world (with more than 5 million in the United States), the largest numbers are in Asia and Africa.

Question 2.5. Assign largest to a two-column table with the name (not the 3-letter code) and poverty_total of the 10 countries with the largest number of people living in extreme poverty.

In [ ]:
largest = ...
largest


Question 2.6. Write a function called poverty_timeline that takes the name of a country as its argument. It should draw a line plot of the number of people living in poverty in that country with time on the horizontal axis. The line plot should have a point for each row in the poverty table for that country. To compute the population living in poverty from a poverty percentage, multiply by the population of the country in that year.

Hint: The names within the poverty_timeline function correspond to our staff solution, but you don't need to use them. Any way that you want to draw the plot is fine, as long as it generates the correct graph.

Hint: For the apply method, if you don't specify a particular column to apply your function on, the whole row is used as an input to the function. Elements inside a row can be accessed using .item.

Hint: This question is long. Feel free to create cells and experiment.

In [ ]:
def population_for_country_in_year(row_of_poverty_table):
"""Optional: Define a function to return the population
of a country in a year using a row from the poverty table."""
...

def poverty_timeline(country):
"""Draw a timeline of people living in extreme poverty in a country."""
geo = ...
country_poverty = ...
...


Finally, draw the timelines below to see how the world is changing. You can check your work by comparing your graphs to the ones on gapminder.org.

In [ ]:
poverty_timeline('India')

In [ ]:
poverty_timeline('Nigeria')

In [ ]:
poverty_timeline('China')

In [ ]:
poverty_timeline('United States')


Although the number of people living in extreme poverty has been increasing in Nigeria and the United States, the massive decreases in China and India have shaped the overall trend that extreme poverty is decreasing worldwide, both in percentage and in absolute number.

Below, we've also added an interactive dropdown menu for you to visualize poverty_timeline graphs for other countries. Note that each dropdown menu selection may take a few seconds to run.

In [ ]:
# Just run this cell

all_countries = poverty_map.column('name')
_ = widgets.interact(poverty_timeline, country=list(all_countries))


You're finished! Congratulations on mastering data visualization and table manipulation. Time to submit. Once you're finished, submit your assignment as a .ipynb (Jupyter Notebook) and .pdf (download as .html, then print to save as a .pdf) on the class Canvas site.

In [ ]: