Tag Archives: data source

How effective are COVID-19 vaccines?

The Our World in Data article How do death rates from COVID-19 differ between people who are vaccinated and those who are not? by Edouard Mathieu and Max Roser  (11/23/2021) provide the answer. For example, their graph here is the death rate by vaccination status. The weakly death rate for Oct 2 for the unvaccinated group is about 15 times more than the vaccinated group. Even this is a little misleading. One of the options for these interactive graphs is to select the age group. The 80+ age group has weakly death rates of 6.51% and 38.28% for vaccinated and unvaccinated. There are also charts for England and Chile. For each chart the data is available. This would be good data for comparing groups in stats.

One other plus is the article starts of with an explanation, with graphics, about why it is misleading to report the percent of vaccination status of those that died. Good quantitative literacy and stats reading.

Has much has poverty decreased?

The Our World in Data article Extreme poverty: how far have we come, how far do we still have to go by Max Roser (11/22/2021) provides numerous graphs that quantify changes in poverty. The most general graph is copied here. This one is for the world but users can select specific countries instead of the world to produce a related graph.

The overall conclusion is summed up well by their summary:

Two centuries ago the majority of the world population was extremely poor. Back then it was widely believed that widespread poverty was inevitable. But this turned out to be wrong. Economic growth is possible and poverty can decline. The world has made immense progress against extreme poverty.

But even after two centuries of progress, extreme poverty is still the reality for every tenth person in the world. This is what the ‘international poverty line’ highlights – this metric plays an important (and successful) role in focusing the world’s attention on these very poorest people in the world.

The poorest people today live in countries which have achieved no growth. This stagnation of the world’s poorest economies is one of the largest problems of our time. Unless this changes millions of people will continue to live in extreme poverty.

 

There are some distribution type graphs that could be useful for statistics classes and most of the graph have an option to download the data.

How hot was Oct 2021?

From NOAA’s Global Climate Report – October 2021:

The global surface temperature for October 2021 was 0.89°C (1.60°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.2°F) — the fourth highest October temperature in the 142-year record. Only Octobers of 2015, 2018, and 2019 had a warmer October.

For the Northern Hemisphere:

The unusually warm temperatures across much of the Northern Hemisphere land resulted in the warmest October on record for the Northern Hemisphere land, surpassing the previous record set in 2019 by 0.11°C (0.20°F).

And for North America:

According to NCEI’s Regional Analysis, North America had its second warmest October on record with a temperature departure of +2.14°C (+3.85°F). This was only 0.03°C (0.05°F) shy of tying the record set in October 1963. According to Meteorological Service of Canada, Ontario (located in eastern Canada) had October temperatures that were 3.0–6.0°C (5.4°–10.8°F) above average. During October 7–15, several locations across Ontario had maximum temperatures above 20°C (68.0°F).

The time series data is at the top of the page.

How much have cod catches in Eastern Canada changed?

Our World in Data has an extensive post on Fish and Overfishing by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (first published Oct 2021). Here is one excerpt from this article:

In the chart here we see five centuries of cod catch in Eastern Canada. These fishing records date back to the year 1500. We see that fish catch started to increase from around 1700 through to the mid-20th-century. It peaked in 1968, before a collapse in fish stocks led to a dramatic decline. In fact, fisheries were forced to close 24 years later, in the early 1990s. Since then, stocks have not been able to recover due to the reopening of fisheries and their overexploitation afterwards.

You can download the data for this chart and more than a dozen others in the post.

 

How hot was Sept 2021?

From NOAA’s Global Climate Report – September 2021:

The global surface temperature for September 2021 was 0.90°C (1.62°F) above the 20th century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F) and was the fifth highest September temperature in the 142-year record. Only Septembers of 2015, 2016, 2019, and 2020 had a higher September temperature departure. The eight warmest Septembers have all occurred since 2014. September 2021 also marked the 45th consecutive September and the 441st consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average.

Some regional highlights:

The Southern Hemisphere’s September 2021 surface temperature departure of +0.70°C (+1.26°F) was the warmest September in the 142-year record, surpassing the previous record set in 2018 by 0.02°C (0.04°F).

According to NCEI’s continental analysis, Africa had its warmest September on record at 1.50°C (2.70°F) above average, surpassing the previous record set in 2017 by 0.07°C (0.13°F).

September 2021 was also South America’s warmest September on record at +1.94°C (+3.49°F). This value exceeded the previous record set in 2015 by 0.23°C (0.41°F).

Time series data is available near the top of the page.

How do we explore invasive aquatic species in the Great Lakes basin?

The Great Lakes Aquatic Nonindigenous Species Information System (GLANSIS) is

designed to to be a “one-stop shop” for information about non-native species in the Great Lakes. GLANSIS hosts regional data about identification, ecology, distribution, environmental and socioeconomic impacts, management, and control of nonindigenous species throughout the Great Lakes basin, along with bibliographic material, risk assessments, and other resources.

If you click on Map Explorer you can make the map here which shows the distribution of Bythotrephes longimanus (Spiny Waterflea – orange) and Echinogammarus ischnus (scud – blue). One nice thing about the Map Explorer is you can easily download a csv file of the data which includes lat long  coordinates (use it in your favorite GIS software). There are also dates so the data can be used as a time series.  Using the GLANSIS Map Explorer by El Lower, Austin Bartos, and Rochelle Stuttevant (8/11/2021) provides an nice intro to the site.

How hot was August 2021?

From NOAA’s Global Climate Report – August 2021:

The August 2021 global surface temperature was 0.90°C (1.62°F) above the 20th century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F). This was the sixth warmest August on record. Nine of the 10 warmest Augusts have occurred since 2009. August of 1998 still ranks among the 10 warmest on record. August 2021 was also the 45th consecutive August and the 440th consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average.

And for land only:

Averaged as a whole, the global land-only surface had a near-record high August temperature at 1.34°C (2.41°F) above average, which is only 0.04°C (0.07°F) less than the record-warm August set in 2016. This was mainly driven by the very warm land-only surface temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere, which had its warmest August on record at +1.44°C (+2.59°F). This value surpassed the previous record set in 2016 by 0.04°C (0.07°F).

More info and data available on the page.

What is the status of Lake Mead?

About two months ago I had the post How low is Lake Mead?  The graph in the post was the yearly minimum end of month elevation. In this post we have a closer look at the end of month elevation since 2011. The last month in the data is July 2021, which is a record low following the previous record low in June 2021. In the previous post I mentioned that this really should be given in some per capita format. I’ll add that presumably the decrease in the volume of water is not linear with the lake elevation. Data here.