Pigs will Save Us from the Zombies: Achieving Data Literacy using Pop Culture

Pigs will Save Us from the Zombies: Achieving Data Literacy using Pop

Culture

Meagan DueverData Services Librarian

K-State Libraries

Road Map for today• Birth of an idea• Finding the data– Imagination tempered by reality

• Getting the data• Massaging the data– With a little coding ability, I’d be dangerous

• Playtime!– Time to lie with statistics– Safety with swine

Using Pop Culture to Teach Data Literacy

• What is data literacy?– Understanding what data mean, – how to read graphs and charts appropriately, – draw correct conclusions from data, – recognize when data are being used in misleading

or inappropriate ways

Using Pop Culture to Teach Data Literacy

• Why is data literacy important?– The definition of data is growing. Ex. text is data– Data is being visualized in new ways – Maps and data have an inherent air of authority

• People don’t question them like they do articles they read

• Why use pop culture?– To engage people who otherwise might be

intimidated by data– No real right or wrong answers; questions welcome

“Pigs will eat anything”

What do we need to know?• If Pigs are going to save us, what do we need

to know?– Where are the pigs?– What kind of pigs will be most effective?• Wild/feral or domestic?• Is there a particular breed of pig that would be most

effective?• Size or the pig? Or quantity of available pigs?

– What kind can we get data for?

Wild or domestic?

• Wild would have the survival instinct– Meaner

• But…– How do we map them?– Are they in every state?– How do you find them when the zombies come?– Do we have enough wild pigs?– I don’t want to be eaten by a wild boar.

• Imagination tempered by reality

What data can we get?

• National Agricultural Statistical Service• http://www.nass.usda.gov/

– Annual Surveys• hundreds of surveys conducted each year on issues

including agricultural production, economics, demographics and the environment.

– Census of Agriculture• provides the only source of uniform, comprehensive

agricultural data for every county in the nation. Taken every 5 years.

Created CntyFIPS to join in ArcMapThe Joy of Data Massage

What’s up with these (D)’s?Data privacy issuesData is reported in the aggregate

What else do we need?

• For geography boundaries: TIGER files http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger-line.html

• How-to’s – http://www.census.gov/geo/education/howtos.html

• Census data?• ESRI ArcMap– Allows us to Join the NASS data to the TIGER file

and display/create maps

Our CntyFIPS from NASS = FIPS

How do we visualize where the pigs are?

Number of Pigs using Natural Breaks

Number of Pigs using Standard Deviation

Number of Pigs using Quantiles

Quantiles = same number of counties in each category

What does it look like if we map the number of farms with pigs?

Normalizing data – Number of farms per square mile

How much warning will we have? More farms = closer to pigs?

How about Pigs per Person?

What about all those cells with (D)’s? -9999?

Pigs per Person

What have we covered?

• How data can be classified• How the classification changes the

visualization• Decisions we’ve made regarding the data– Data availability– Variables we’ve chosen to map– How we’ve mapped them• What is our final map?

What if I’m wrong?

And if there is no Zombie Apocalypse?

At least we know where the bacon is