Description
News stories this time last year raised the alarm of increased RSV levels among pediatric populations, potentially overwhelming children’s hospitals. (WAPO, Links to an external site.CNN, Links to an external site.WSJ). Links to an external site.You have been tasked with assessing recent historical trends of this disease in certain Eastern portions of the United States, to provide a visual answer to the question of whether the trend in RSV rates this year may also be of concern.
Luckily, you know that the CDC tracks and releases these data weekly at this siteLinks to an external site.. Using your freshly-acquired skills in R, pull the data for the total number of PCR tests performed and the percent positive by week for regions 1-6, then create 2 graphs (in a markdown or quarto document):
1) First, create a graph faceted by region showing the total number of weekly PCR tests performed. This will help determine if any particular location is at increased risk relative to past seasonal outbreaks.
2) For your second graph, show the trends of percent positive tests by region on a non-faceted graph, so the audience sees where to focus any increased efforts at education and mitigation.
Once those graphs are created, render the markdown/quarto document as a pdf or html file and upload it here.
To help you get started, here Download hereis a quick script to load the data that you can use in a code chunk. You do not have to use this if you prefer another route.
A few key notes:
Use other than the base color palette for ggplot – ensure it’s easy to read and the various regions can be distinguished.
If you find that a certain graph type isn’t being created, check the variable class. Data cleaning is always the first step of graphical analysis.
Other formatting decisions are up to you.
Extra credit (up to 25% back on any previous HW): see the uploaded image – it was made using the gapminder_unfiltered dataset from the gapminder package with no filters or deletions. Recreate it exactly, but change the color palette / theme to be one more to your liking. Don’t worry about any distortion – the main graph elements are what count.
