The Challenge

Overview

During  PopAgingDataViz—UK, workshop participants will begin working on The Challenge. Our expectations are relatively simple: you and your partner are expected to apply the skills and techniques acquired throughout the workshop¹ to produce at least one elegant data visualisation in . Scroll down further for more details.

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Data

You are free to use any of the datasets featured in  PopAgingDataViz—UK or one of the following data frames drawn from the gssr and onsr libraries, respectively:

Have Another Dataset in Mind?

If you’d like to work with your own data, that is in principle permissible. However, you will need to get your proposal approved by the course instructor and the powers that be at CAnD3.

GSS Cumulative File

You can access the American General Social Survey’s (GSS) Cumulative File by executing the code snippet embedded below:

load(url("https://github.com/sakeefkarim/popaging-dataviz-UK/raw/refs/heads/main/data/challenge.RData"))

Moreover, you can search for the variables in the GSS Cumulative File—i.e., their names, labels, and descriptions—using the following table. At the bottom of the table, you’ll find information about companion codebooks.

GSS Codebook, 1972-2018 (Click to Expand or Close)

Other GSS codebooks can be accessed here.

Personal Well-Being in the UK

Alternatively, you can download aggregate data on personal well-being from the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics. Much like the GSS, you can access well_being_uk by running the following code snippet:

load(url("https://github.com/sakeefkarim/popaging-dataviz-UK/raw/refs/heads/main/data/challenge.RData"))

The well_being_uk data frame includes information on aggregate levels of happiness, life satisfaction, the perceived “worthwhileness” of life, and anxiety at lower levels of geogaraphic resolution in the United Kingdom circa 2019-2020—as well as data on old age dependency from 2019.² For more information about the indicators featured in the dataset, please carefully review the this page.

Measures of Personal Well-Being

All measures of well-being reflect average scores on a 10-point scale. For simplicity, well_being_uk omits distributional data as well as information about uncertainty around point estimates.

Roundtable Discussion

Towards the end of  PopAgingDataViz—UK, we will meet as a broader collective to hold a roundtable discussion.³ During this discussion, you and your partner will informally present your (nascent) data visualisation and receive feedback on how the visualisation can be refined going forward. You are also expected to provide constructive feedback on the work of your peers (i.e., non-group members).

Footnotes

1. Or during McGill’s Programming Summer Camp.

2. To avoid confusion, I use the World Bank’s “per 100 working-age people” denominator in lieu of the ONS standard (per 1000).

3. Enter a clever reference to King Arthur here.