Click the Original, Code and Reconstruction tabs to read about the issues and how they were fixed.

Original


Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-coronavirus-cases-world-map/?sref=3BwV4ZDo .


Objective

I have taken this chart from a report published by Bloomberg ‘https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-coronavirus-cases-world-map/?sref=3BwV4ZDo’ in October 9th 2020. This is an official report is about Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak Across the World. The epicenter of the pandemic has continued to shift throughout the year, from China, then Europe, then the U.S., and now to developing countries like Brazil. Cases globally surpassed 10 million in late June, but ever since infections have been multiplying faster. The U.S. and India have the most infections, accounting for more than a third of all cases combined..

In the map displaying the Covid Confirmed cases and Covid Death cases worldwide, the authors want to illustrate that the world is bracing for a new wave of Covid-19 infections, as the coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 36.5 million people and killed more than 1,000,000 globally since late January.

The visualisation chosen had the following three main issues:

  • Firstly, I would like to point out that, the colour of the map is same and confusing, and a layman cannot understand the total cases and deaths, in a country or worldwide, in birds eye view, in this particular visualisation.The scaling is bad as well.

  • The totals of cases and deaths denoted in the heading look as one single figure without making any distinction as to which is confirmed cases and which is death cases; It is scary to unknowingly read that there are 365 trillions who are infected by corona and it misleads viewers who might get traumatised, when news should be to inform and not to scare people from all walks of life.

  • Even at the bottom of the map, the country wise listing of: 1.where deaths have occurred, 2.deaths and 3.cases, are showing alarming indications of not highlighting and informing rather than creating panic during this pandemic. Instead of affected countries, confirmed cases and deaths, showing ‘’where deaths have occurred’ is repetitive and too somber.

Reference

Code

The following code was used to fix the issues identified in the original.

library(ggplot2)

# From the source data, using the numbers, I have made a data frame with major countries having high number of covid confirmed cases and deaths, with the other remaining countries grouped as one variable "Others".The figures in millions have been scaled as of 1 = 1 million to facilitate ease in visualisation in geombars. I have not specifically put the figures on the top of each bars as the figures can be depicted from the yaxis. Please view the codes and the plot as shown below:

dfcovid <- data.frame(countries=rep(c("U.S.", "Brazil", "India", "Mexico", "U.K.", "Italy", "Spain", "Others" ), each=1), 
                     
                     
           
          confirmed_cases=c(8.636165, 5.394128,      7.909959, 0.891160, 0.876840, 0.525782, 1.046132, 11.281770),

 
          max_death_cases=c(0.225230, 0.157134,
    0.119014, 0.088924, 0.044986, 0.037338, 0.034752, 0.355246)
)                                   
                                           
dfcovid$countries<-factor(dfcovid$countries, levels=c("U.S.", "Brazil", "India", "Mexico", "U.K.", "Italy", "Spain", "Others"))

coronavirusoutbreak<-ggplot(data = dfcovid,
            aes(x=countries)) + 
  geom_bar(aes(y=confirmed_cases, colour = "confirmed_cases", fill = "red"),
           stat="identity") +
  geom_bar(aes(y=max_death_cases, colour = "max_death_cases"),
           stat="identity") +
  geom_hline(yintercept = 1.06,color="blue") +
    scale_fill_discrete(name = "cases", "deaths") + 
   coord_cartesian (ylim = c(0,12))  + 
  labs (title = "Confirmed Corona Cases Worldwide = 36,561,936", subtitle = "Corona Deaths Worldwide = 1,062,624",  y="Confirmed_cases and deaths (millions)", x="Countries") +
  
  ggsave("Coronavirusoutbreak.jpg", width = 16, height = 12, units = "cm")

Data Reference

Reconstruction

The following plot fixes the main issues in the original. The headings are given clearly with main title as Confirmed cases of Corona and subtitle as Corona deaths, with no element of confusion. This gives us a realistic picture when we compare with the bar charts which unassumingly gives the country wise confirmed cases in red and deaths in green. The total deaths worldwide at 1.06 million, is depicted in blue as an intercept of the yaxis. The countries with most impact have been specifically noted in the bars and remaining other nations are classified in “others”. The scaling of the yaxis also depicts the actual figures given in the source data and indicates in millions how many are affected and the deaths that have occured, which do not raise a false alarm but give realistic details. I have used the cartesian plot and not maps, which can easily be understood by a layman. In short this simple visualisation tells a compelling story without deception or unnecessary complications.