Gabby and Joseph: What factors go into deciding where to vacation? GDP v. Murder Rate
This was a very interesting topic, but I feel they could have done much more with it. They did not have
many forms of data, only one or two graphs. They described it well and I think the presentation was
engaging, interesting, and well done. However, I would have liked to see more forms of data
visualization. I think they simplified the data in a way that everyone could understand, which is
important. But they also should have better applied the data to their topic of traveling. I think that the
topic of safe spots to travel was a good idea, but they only really mentioned vacations during the intro
slide and then never again. As Col Pietz said, the GDP didn’t really have a big connection to vacationing.
Dylan and Charlie: Are overweight/obesity rates correlated with higher numbers of fast food
restaurants?
They showed a map of where in America that obesity is the worst. They say graphs like this that we see
often can be misleading. They showed a bar graph showing why these graphs are misleading because
the much lighter states have only a 1-2% difference from the much darker states. I think it was good of
them to identify and explain this. They also compared another map of fast-food restaurants to the
obesity map. They identified that the two were not very coordinated because number of fast food
restaurants correlate far more to the population than obesity rates. I think it was not super strong for
them to compare the two map graphs right after they explained why the obesity map was misleading.
They then used the same exact map to compare with fast food restaurants. They explained how the
rates of people going to fast food restaurants could vary depending on state and could better correlate
to the obesity rates, but they don’t have any data for this.