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nytimes / covid-19-data

A repository of data on coronavirus cases and deaths in the U.S.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
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Joplin, Missouri #106

Closed jlgallup closed 4 years ago

jlgallup commented 4 years ago

The Readme file says that the data for the city of Joplin, Missouri is reported separately from two counties which it spans, Jasper County and Newton County. However, I can't find any entry for Joplin, Missouri in the us-counties.csv file.

jkua commented 4 years ago

Joplin is a city, not a county, so there won't be an entry for Joplin. As you mention, the cases from Joplin show up in the entries for Jasper County and Newton County.

jlgallup commented 4 years ago

In that case, it should be removed from the section "Geographical Exceptions" in the README.md file. There it says, "Joplin, Mo.: Joplin is reported separately from Jasper and Newton Counties."

jkua commented 4 years ago

Sorry, I retract my statement. For some reason when I read the README, I interpreted it as saying that Joplin's cases were included in the counts from Jasper County and Newton County. Now I see it's saying the opposite. My apologies.

albertsun commented 4 years ago

Thanks folks - you're right. There is 1 case in Joplin, MO right now that we are including with Jasper County. We may continue to do that and will either add a Joplin row or update the README to clarify the situation.

jlgallup commented 4 years ago

Albert, Thanks again for the careful attention to these details. It makes the data much more valuable and useable.

I for one vote that you don't create an additional exception in Joplin to the County, State organization of the data. Most people using this data will have to create a special coding section just to deal with the Joplin exception, or explain at length in their help files. Distributing the data from Kansas City to its constituent counties (imperfectly) took me more than an hour of coding.

I know people think in terms of cities - a good solution to this is to merge in the County - Metropolitan Area (CBSA) crosswalk from the U.S. Census, but this requires a clean county dataset or kludges to correct each of the problems.

John

albertsun commented 4 years ago

@jlgallup in today's update we've removed Joplin from the geographic exceptions list and will be publishing their cases as part of the county totals.