Assignment Instructions: Using gapminder data, choose any variables to produce three plots using ggplot R package and upload your plot using R Markdown file via RPubs. Send your RPubs link as well as upload your R Markdown file via Brightspace. Your assignment will be evaluated by (1) the coherence of your study purpose, description of the data, and how the graphs can achieve your goal(s); (2) the quality of the plots; and (3) the layout of the R Markdown file.

Data: Gapminder
Source: This is a subset of the data available at https://www.gapminder.org/. It includes data for 142 countries listing values for life expectancy, GDP per capita, and population listed every five years from 1952 to 2007. For this study, data visualization will use values from the 2007 dataset only.

Number of cases: 142
Number of variables: 6

Description: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita is a broad but important component of a country’s overall economic growth (Bolt, Timmer, and Zanden 2014). Specifically, it measures the total output of a country’s production of goods and services for one year divided by the country’s total population (Hernández-Ramírez, Castillo-Mussot, and Hernández-Casildo 2021), and is typically expressed in US dollars (USD).
   In addition to population, GDP per capita has several influencing factors, but some are still not as understood. The geography (or continent) where a country is located does not appear to have any relation with GDP per capita, yet it is known to influence human population characteristics (Small and Cohen 2004). Furthermore, life expectancy is also well-known to contribute to a country’s population and is defined as the average total number of years that a human expects to live (Tosato et al. 2007). It is uncertain if and then how these variables may influence a country’s GDP per capita given their indirect relationship via population.
   Below are figures depicting data from 142 countries across 5 continents: Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania: Life expectancy is expressed in years and GDP per capita is expressed in USD, both for the year 2007.

Research Questions: What is the distribution of the data based on continent location? Which continent has the lowest GDP per Capita? Does geographical location influence the relationship between life expectancy and GDP per capita?

Figure 1: COUNTRIES PER INDIVIDUAL CONTINENT. A total of 142 countries are recorded in the gapminder data subset. African countries make up about 33% and Oceanic countries make up about 1% of the data.

Figure 2: LOG GDP PER CAPITA FOR EACH CONTINENT in 2007. The lowest median log GDP per Capita is found in Africa at 3.2 (~1585.00 USD). While Asian and Africa have the same range in Log GDP per Capita, Asia has the largest spread (interquartile range) between countries.

Figure 3: LOG GDP PER CAPITA and LIFE EXPECTANCY in 2007, categorized by continent. There is a positive correlation existing between the two variables. Two clusters of data appear at the lower and upper regression line, with the bottom cluster containing more of the African countries.

References

Bolt, Jutta, Marcel P. Timmer, and Jan Luiten van Zanden. 2014. GDP Per Capita Since 1820. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264214262-7-en.
Hernández-Ramírez, E., M. del Castillo-Mussot, and J. Hernández-Casildo. 2021. “World Per Capita Gross Domestic Product Measured Nominally and Across Countries with Purchasing Power Parity: Stretched Exponential or Boltzmann–Gibbs Distribution?” Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and Its Applications 568 (April): 125690. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2020.125690.
Small, Christopher, and Joel E. Cohen. 2004. “Continental Physiography, Climate, and the Global Distribution of Human Population.” Current Anthropology 45 (2): 269–77. https://doi.org/10.1086/382255.
Tosato, Matteo, Valentina Zamboni, Alessandro Ferrini, and Matteo Cesari. 2007. “The Aging Process and Potential Interventions to Extend Life Expectancy.” Clinical Interventions in Aging 2 (3): 401–12. https://doi.org/10.2147/cia.S12159921.