Data Analysis Workflow – The Firehose

SOCI 3040 – Quantitative Research Methods

John McLevey (he/him)

Sociology, Memorial University

January 14, 2025

1 Drinking From the Firehose

1.1 the firehose

flowchart LR
  p[[Plan]]
  sim[[Simulate]]
  a[[Acquire]]
  e[[Explore/Understand]]
  s[[Share]]

  p --> sim --> a --> e --> s

Rohan Alexander’s (2023) Telling Stories with Data workflow

1. Australian elections
2. Toronto shelters
3. Neonatal mortality rates (NMR)

1.2 the firehose

Whenever you’re learning a new tool, for a long time, you’re going to suck\(\dots\) But the good news is that is typical; that’s something that happens to everyone, and it’s only temporary.

Hadley Wickham as quoted by Barrett (2021)

You will be guided thoroughly here. Hopefully by experiencing the excitement of telling stories with data, you will feel empowered to stick with it.

Rohan Alexander (2023)

1.3 import libraries

library("janitor")
library("knitr")
library("lubridate")
library("opendatatoronto")
library("tidyverse")
library("here")

2 Plan

Australian Elections

2.1 plan

2.1.1 Australian Elections

How many seats did each political party win in the 2022 Australian Federal Election?

Australia is a parliamentary democracy
with 151 seats in the House of Representatives.

Major parties: Liberal and Labour
Minor parties: Nationals and Greens
Many smaller parties and independents

2.2 plan

(a) Sketch of a possible dataset to create a graph

(b) Sketch of a possible graph to answer our question

Figure 1: Sketches of a potential dataset and graph related to an Australian election. The basic requirement for the dataset is that it has the name of the seat (i.e., a “division” in Australia) and the party of the person elected.

3 Simulate

Australian Elections

3.1 simulate

library(tidyverse)
library(janitor)

3.2 simulate

We’ll simulate a dataset with two variables,
Division and Party, and some values for each.

division
the name of one of the 131 Australian divisions

party
the name of one of the political parties
Liberal, Labor, National, Green, or Other

3.3 simulate

simulated_data <-
    tibble(
        # Use 1 through to 151 to represent each division
        "Division" = 1:151,
        # Randomly pick an option, with replacement, 151 times
        "Party" = sample(
            x = c("Liberal", "Labor", "National", "Green", "Other"),
            size = 151,
            replace = TRUE
        )
    )

The <- symbol is an assignment operator in R. It assigns the value on the right to the variable name on the left. Here, we’re creating a new data object called simulated_data, which will store a table of simulated information.

tibble() is a function from the tidyverse package that creates a data frame, which is a type of table used to organize data. Unlike traditional data frames, tibble handles data more cleanly and is especially useful in data analysis.

Inside the tibble() function, we specify columns and the values we want in each. On Line 4, we create a column named “Division”. 1:151 generates a sequence of numbers from 1 to 151. This sequence will represent each unique division (or group) in our simulated dataset and helps to identify each row in the data.

Then we create another column in our tibble called Party. sample() is a function that randomly selects values from a specified set. Here, it’s used to pick a political party for each division, simulating party representation across divisions.

x defines the set of values that sample() will pick from. The c() function combines these five options — “Liberal”, “Labor”, “National”, “Green”, and “Other” — into a list of possible parties. In other words, each division will be randomly assigned one of these five party names, representing the political party that wins the division in our simulation. size = 151 specifies that sample() should generate 151 random selections, matching the number of divisions we created in the “Division” column.

When sampling, replace = TRUE allows each party name to be selected multiple times, as though we’re picking “with replacement” (i.e., once we sample a party name, it goes back into the bag so it can be drawn again). Without this, each party could only be chosen once, which wouldn’t match our goal of assigning a random party to each division.

We can print the simulated_data object to view the simulated dataset. When we run this line, R will display the table with two columns, Division and Party, where each division is assigned one of the five parties randomly.

3.4 simulate

🤘 We have our fake data!

simulated_data

# A tibble: 151 × 2
   Division Party   
      <int> <chr>   
 1        1 National
 2        2 National
 3        3 Green   
 4        4 National
 5        5 National
 6        6 Liberal 
 7        7 Liberal 
 8        8 National
 9        9 Green   
10       10 Green   
# ℹ 141 more rows

4 Acquire

Australian Elections

4.1 acquire

The data we want is provided by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), which is the non-partisan agency that organizes Australian federal elections. We can download the data using this link, but we want to do it programatically, storing the results to a dataframe object called raw_elections_data.

data_url <- "https://results.aec.gov.au/27966/website/Downloads/HouseMembersElectedDownload-27966.csv"

raw_elections_data <-
    read_csv(
        file = data_url,
        show_col_types = FALSE,
        skip = 1
    )

4.2 acquire

We’ll save the data as a CSV file.

library(here)

write_csv(
    x = raw_elections_data,
    file = here("data", "australian_voting.csv")
)

✌️ R Tip

The here() function, from the here library, simplifies file paths by always referencing the root directory for a project. This makes code more reproducible and eliminates issues with working directories, especially when you are using more than one machine, collaborating, or sharing code with someone else. Jenny Bryan wrote a brief “Ode to the here package,” “here here,” which you can read… here.

4.3 acquire

🤘 We have our real data!

raw_elections_data

# A tibble: 151 × 8
   DivisionID DivisionNm StateAb CandidateID GivenNm Surname
        <dbl> <chr>      <chr>         <dbl> <chr>   <chr>  
 1        179 Adelaide   SA            36973 Steve   GEORGA…
 2        197 Aston      VIC           36704 Alan    TUDGE  
 3        198 Ballarat   VIC           36409 Cather… KING   
 4        103 Banks      NSW           37018 David   COLEMAN
 5        180 Barker     SA            37083 Tony    PASIN  
 6        104 Barton     NSW           36820 Linda   BURNEY 
 7        192 Bass       TAS           37134 Bridge… ARCHER 
 8        318 Bean       ACT           36231 David   SMITH  
 9        200 Bendigo    VIC           36424 Lisa    CHESTE…
10        105 Bennelong  NSW           36827 Jerome  LAXALE 
# ℹ 141 more rows
# ℹ 2 more variables: PartyNm <chr>, PartyAb <chr>

4.4 acquire

head() shows the first six rows.

head(raw_elections_data)

# A tibble: 6 × 8
  DivisionID DivisionNm StateAb CandidateID GivenNm  Surname
       <dbl> <chr>      <chr>         <dbl> <chr>    <chr>  
1        179 Adelaide   SA            36973 Steve    GEORGA…
2        197 Aston      VIC           36704 Alan     TUDGE  
3        198 Ballarat   VIC           36409 Catheri… KING   
4        103 Banks      NSW           37018 David    COLEMAN
5        180 Barker     SA            37083 Tony     PASIN  
6        104 Barton     NSW           36820 Linda    BURNEY 
# ℹ 2 more variables: PartyNm <chr>, PartyAb <chr>

4.5 acquire

tail() shows the last six rows.

tail(raw_elections_data)

# A tibble: 6 × 8
  DivisionID DivisionNm StateAb CandidateID GivenNm  Surname
       <dbl> <chr>      <chr>         <dbl> <chr>    <chr>  
1        152 Wentworth  NSW           37451 Allegra  SPENDER
2        153 Werriwa    NSW           36810 Anne Ma… STANLEY
3        150 Whitlam    NSW           36811 Stephen  JONES  
4        178 Wide Bay   QLD           37506 Llew     O'BRIEN
5        234 Wills      VIC           36452 Peter    KHALIL 
6        316 Wright     QLD           37500 Scott    BUCHHO…
# ℹ 2 more variables: PartyNm <chr>, PartyAb <chr>

4.6 acquire

“We are trying to make it similar to the dataset that we thought we wanted in the planning stage. While it is fine to move away from the plan, this needs to be a deliberate, reasoned decision.” (Alexander 2023)

Let’s clean.

aus_voting_data <- here("data", "australian_voting.csv")

raw_elections_data <-
    read_csv(
        file = aus_voting_data,
        show_col_types = FALSE
    )

4.7 acquire

clean_names() makes variables easier to type.

cleaned_elections_data <- clean_names(raw_elections_data)

Let’s look at the first 6 rows.

head(cleaned_elections_data)

# A tibble: 6 × 8
  division_id division_nm state_ab candidate_id given_nm 
        <dbl> <chr>       <chr>           <dbl> <chr>    
1         179 Adelaide    SA              36973 Steve    
2         197 Aston       VIC             36704 Alan     
3         198 Ballarat    VIC             36409 Catherine
4         103 Banks       NSW             37018 David    
5         180 Barker      SA              37083 Tony     
6         104 Barton      NSW             36820 Linda    
# ℹ 3 more variables: surname <chr>, party_nm <chr>,
#   party_ab <chr>

4.8 acquire

✌️ R Tip

We can choose certain variables of interest with select() from dplyr, which we loaded as part of the tidyverse. The pipe operator |> pushes the output of one line to be the first input of the function on the next line.

We are primarily interested in two variables:

division_nm (division name)
party_nm (party name)

cleaned_elections_data <-
    cleaned_elections_data |>
    select(
        division_nm,
        party_nm
    )

4.9 acquire

head(cleaned_elections_data)

# A tibble: 6 × 2
  division_nm party_nm              
  <chr>       <chr>                 
1 Adelaide    Australian Labor Party
2 Aston       Liberal               
3 Ballarat    Australian Labor Party
4 Banks       Liberal               
5 Barker      Liberal               
6 Barton      Australian Labor Party

This looks good, but some of the variable names are still not obvious because they are abbreviated.

4.10 acquire

✌️ R Tip

We can look at the names of the columns (i.e., variables) in a dataset using names(). We can change them using rename() from dplyr.

names(cleaned_elections_data)

[1] "division_nm" "party_nm"   

Let’s rename.

4.11 acquire

cleaned_elections_data <-
    cleaned_elections_data |>
    rename(
        division = division_nm,
        elected_party = party_nm
    )

head(cleaned_elections_data)

# A tibble: 6 × 2
  division elected_party         
  <chr>    <chr>                 
1 Adelaide Australian Labor Party
2 Aston    Liberal               
3 Ballarat Australian Labor Party
4 Banks    Liberal               
5 Barker   Liberal               
6 Barton   Australian Labor Party

4.12 acquire

What are the unique values in elected_party?

cleaned_elections_data$elected_party |>
    unique()

[1] "Australian Labor Party"              
[2] "Liberal"                             
[3] "Liberal National Party of Queensland"
[4] "The Greens"                          
[5] "The Nationals"                       
[6] "Independent"                         
[7] "Katter's Australian Party (KAP)"     
[8] "Centre Alliance"                     

Cool, but let’s simplify the party names in elected_party to match what we simulated. We can do this with case_match() from dplyr.

4.13 acquire

cleaned_elections_data <-
    cleaned_elections_data |>
    mutate(
        elected_party =
            case_match(
                elected_party,
                "Australian Labor Party" ~ "Labor",
                "Liberal National Party of Queensland" ~ "Liberal",
                "Liberal" ~ "Liberal",
                "The Nationals" ~ "Nationals",
                "The Greens" ~ "Greens",
                "Independent" ~ "Other",
                "Katter's Australian Party (KAP)" ~ "Other",
                "Centre Alliance" ~ "Other"
            )
    )

4.14 acquire

head(cleaned_elections_data)

# A tibble: 6 × 2
  division elected_party
  <chr>    <chr>        
1 Adelaide Labor        
2 Aston    Liberal      
3 Ballarat Labor        
4 Banks    Liberal      
5 Barker   Liberal      
6 Barton   Labor        

Our data now matches our plan! 😎

4.15 acquire

Let’s save the cleaned data so that we can start with it data in the next stage. We’ll use a new filename to preserve the original and make it easy to identify the clean version.

aus_elections_clean_path <- here("data", "cleaned_elections_data.csv")

write_csv(
    x = cleaned_elections_data,
    file = aus_elections_clean_path
)

5 Explore / Understand

Australian Elections

5.1 explore / understand

How do we build the graph that we planned?

5.2 explore / understand

First, we read in the cleaned dataset that we just created.

cleaned_elections_data <-
    read_csv(
        file = aus_elections_clean_path,
        show_col_types = FALSE
    )

✌️ R Tip

I’m using the filepath object I previously created: aus_elections_clean_path.

aus_elections_clean_path

[1] "/Users/johnmclevey/SOCI3040/data/cleaned_elections_data.csv"

This won’t work in a new script unless we re-create the object. Can you explain why?

5.3 explore / understand

head(cleaned_elections_data)

# A tibble: 6 × 2
  division elected_party
  <chr>    <chr>        
1 Adelaide Labor        
2 Aston    Liberal      
3 Ballarat Labor        
4 Banks    Liberal      
5 Barker   Liberal      
6 Barton   Labor        

😎

5.4 explore / understand

How many seats did each party win?

We can get a quick count with count() from dplyr.

cleaned_elections_data |>
    count(elected_party)

# A tibble: 5 × 2
  elected_party     n
  <chr>         <int>
1 Greens            4
2 Labor            77
3 Liberal          48
4 Nationals        10
5 Other            12

5.5 explore / understand

Remember, we’re trying to make something like this.

✌️ R Tip

The grammar of graphics is a conceptual framework for constructing data visualizations. It breaks down plots to their most basic elements, like data, scales, geoms (geometric objects), coordinates, and statistical transformations. The idea is to plan and build our vizualizations by layering these basic elements together rather than mindlessly relying on generic chart types.

ggplot2, a data visualization library from the tidyverse, is designed around the grammar of graphics idea. We build data visualizations by layering the desired elements of our plots. For example, we use aes() to specify aesthetic mappings that link our data to visual elements like position, color, size, shape, and transparency. We can create and tweak just about any visualization we want by layering data, aesthetics, and geoms using the add operator, +.

, allowing the viewer to interpret the values and relationships in the dataset visually. By mapping data to these properties, we can layer information on the same plot and enhance the viewer’s understanding of patterns, trends, and differences.

In ggplot2, aesthetics are specified within the aes() function, where each aesthetic is mapped to a data variable. For instance, x and y represent positions on the axes, while color, fill, size, and shape control other visual aspects. By carefully selecting aesthetics, we can add depth to the plot without clutter, guiding the viewer’s eye to the most important parts.

5.6 explore / understand

Let’s visualize the counts as vertical bars using geom_bar() from ggplot2.

ggplot(
    cleaned_elections_data, # specify the data
    aes(x = elected_party) # specify aesthetics
) + # add a layer with the + operator
    geom_bar() # specify a geometric shape (bar)

But it’s cleaner to use the pipe operator |>.

cleaned_elections_data |>
    ggplot(aes(x = elected_party)) +
    geom_bar()

5.6 explore / understand

Figure 2: Meh. We can do better.

5.7 explore / understand

cleaned_elections_data |>
    ggplot(aes(x = elected_party)) +
    geom_bar() +
    theme_minimal() + # Improve the theme
    labs(x = "Party", y = "Number of seats") # Improve the labels

5.7 explore / understand

Figure 3: Number of seats won, by political party, at the 2022 Australian Federal Election. 😎

5.8

cleaned_elections_data |>
    ggplot(aes(x = elected_party)) +
    geom_bar()

cleaned_elections_data |>
    ggplot(aes(x = elected_party)) +
    geom_bar() +
    theme_minimal() +
    labs(x = "Party", y = "Number of seats")

(a) Default theme and labels

(b) Improved theme and labels

Figure 4: Both versions of the plot, and the code that produced them, side-by-side for comparison.

6 Share

Australian Elections

6.1 share

Example taken directly from Alexander (2023), here.

Australia is a parliamentary democracy with 151 seats in the House of Representatives, which is the house from which government is formed. There are two major parties—“Liberal” and “Labor”—two minor parties—“Nationals” and “Greens”—and many smaller parties. The 2022 Federal Election occurred on 21 May, and around 15 million votes were cast. We were interested in the number of seats that were won by each party.

We downloaded the results, on a seat-specific basis, from the Australian Electoral Commission website. We cleaned and tidied the dataset using the statistical programming language R (R Core Team 2023) including the tidyverse (Wickham et al. 2019) and janitor (Firke 2023). We then created a graph of the number of seats that each political party won (Figure 3).

We found that the Labor Party won 77 seats, followed by the Liberal Party with 48 seats. The minor parties won the following number of seats: the Nationals won 10 seats and the Greens won 4 seats. Finally, there were 10 Independents elected as well as candidates from smaller parties.

The distribution of seats is skewed toward the two major parties which could reflect relatively stable preferences on the part of Australian voters, or possibly inertia due to the benefits of already being a major party such a national network or funding. A better understanding of the reasons for this distribution are of interest in future work. While the dataset consists of everyone who voted, it worth noting that in Australia some are systematically excluded from voting, and it is much more difficult for some to vote than others.

One aspect to be especially concerned with is making sure that this communication is focused on the needs of the audience and telling a story. Data journalism provides some excellent examples of how analysis needs to be tailored to the audience, for instance, Cardoso (2020) and Bronner (2020).

6.2 References

Alexander, Rohan. 2023. Telling Stories with Data: With Applications in R. Chapman; Hall/CRC.

Barrett, Malcolm. 2021. Data Science as an Atomic Habit. https://malco.io/articles/2021-01-04-data-science-as-an-atomic-habit.

Bronner, Laura. 2020. “Why Statistics Don’t Capture the Full Extent of the Systemic Bias in Policing.” FiveThirtyEight, June. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-statistics-dont-capture-the-full-extent-of-the-systemic-bias-in-policing/.

Cardoso, Tom. 2020. “Bias behind bars: A Globe investigation finds a prison system stacked against Black and Indigenous inmates.” The Globe and Mail, October. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-investigation-racial-bias-in-canadian-prison-risk-assessments/.

Firke, Sam. 2023. janitor: Simple Tools for Examining and Cleaning Dirty Data. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=janitor.

R Core Team. 2023. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/.

Wickham, Hadley, Mara Averick, Jenny Bryan, Winston Chang, Lucy D’Agostino McGowan, Romain François, Garrett Grolemund, et al. 2019. “Welcome to the Tidyverse.” Journal of Open Source Software 4 (43): 1686. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01686.