Blog Plan

[vchappell]

1. Do you plan for your final project to be an extension of the mid-semester project?

Yes

a. If Yes: Identify specific ideas for how you will extend your mid-semester project. The more details the better here. Do you plan to add additional data? Be sure to include which topic(s) you will incorporate: text analysis, network science, unsupervised learning, and/or spatial data.

We hope to look at different aspects of the SAMHSA MH-CLD dataset that we used to expand on our findings from the Shiny project. Since our mid-semester project focused on mental health diagnoses, we would like to at least expand our scope to include other variables such as substance abuse diagnoses and psychiatric care. Given that the dataset includes state and region values for many of the cases, we plan to incorporate spatial data into the blog.

3. Describe what you hope to deliver as a final product. Will your blog include a published Shiny application? Will it incorporate an interactive map? Will it involve a predictive model that forecasts future values of some quantity using data that you’ve integrated?

We hope to have a few components within our blog post. Using Shiny, we could make an interactive table of our datasets, and additionally we hope to include an interactive choropleth map displaying different health results from our data broken down by state.

4. Outline a schedule for your group’s progress that will take you from now (ideas phase) to final blog post and presentation at the end of the semester. During the last project, we had specific checkpoints for different phases of the project. Based on what you envision for your final blog post, identify checkpoints for your group and dates by which you plan to reach those checkpoints. Hold each other accountable, so you’re not waiting until the last minute to do things! In particular, you should have at least one checkpoint each week (ideally two) identifying what work you expect to complete by then.

Our checkpoints tentatively look something like the following: 4/13 - 4/20: wrangling and idea generation for plots 4/20 - 4/27: select final plots and begin coding 4/27 - 5/4: finish coding and complete written portion 5/5 - 5/9: finalize and polish

[katcorr]

Sounds good! I was going to say that "we could make an interactive table of our datasets" is very vague and it would be helpful to define what columns you'd have in the table, what each row would represent, and how the interactivity would be helpful, but it sounds like you have incorporated further "idea generation" into your work for this week. Just be careful with tables -- summary tables can be useful. But tables with raw data -- even interactive ones -- can be unwieldy and not very useful so you shouldn't just stick such a table in unless there's a clear purpose.

Proposal: 10/10

[vchappell]

Thank you for your advice on the tables! If we did incorporate one I believe it would act as a contextual tool for wrangled data rather than raw data like you mentioned, but we have not decided for sure the exact contents. Something we are considering is utilizing another dataset that might produce better visualizations than the NSDUH dataset I had used for the Shiny app, so that is primarily where the uncertainty was coming from. Thank you again, have a great break!

[vchappell]

Status Update # 1 :

We settled on the choropleth of comorbidities of mental health conditions by US state from the SAMHSA dataset as one of our final plots. To wrangle for this, we took and condensed the unused comorbidity wrangling code from our Shiny project and added/recoded the variable for state in the original dataset.

Additionally, we determined that an interactive dataset with filtered/wrangled data covering employment status + comorbidities + diagnoses on a state level will be included. To help contextualize this table, a few static charts drawn from the data will be incorporated showing results that will be elaborated on via the written portion of our post. Wrangling on this portion still needs to be done, but there is space to do this work over the weekend and be on track for the “determining final plots + coding” step of our project.

[katcorr]

Great! Update 1: 5/5

[vchappell]

Status Update #2

This week, we began coding for the comorbidity choropleth using spatial data, and will hopefully have a working static chart over the weekend which can then be expanded to include interactivity.

My (Vera's) schedule is a bit behind due to other scheduling conflicts this week, but those have been relieved and getting caught up here with regards to wrapping up the coding on the table is a priority for this coming weekend.

[katcorr]

Ok! Update 2: 5/5