Digging Deeper Into Obesity Visualizations

Thank you to all of that sent emails in response to the visualizing obesity post. There were two main themes in the emails I received:

1- You wanted to look more deeply at where obesity resides on a local level and what the common predictors are.

2- You found them difficult to interpret because of the number of variables represented within the visualizations.

So, I did some digging to see if I could find anything that would address these points. I came across “Fit and Fat in America,” which is the product of an interactive graph contest held last March by The ReadWriteWeb and Tableau Public.  For the challenge, participants downloaded one of four data sets, one of which was an Activity Rates and Healthy Living Set, and then used the Tableau Public free software to design an interactive visualization. This data was taken from the Food Environment Atlas data.

Rina Petersen, winner of the competition, designed the graph to enable users to examine various factors associated with obesity. Here are some tips on how to use the visualization from  Rina’s blog:

• To select region, use the checkbox option on the right.
• To select one or more states, click on the bubble in the map or highlight multiple states by dragging your mouse. You could also use the drop down menu. The counties within the state will be displayed according to the state you selected. To release your selection, click on the anywhere on the map outside the US states or use the drop down menu.
• To view profile by county (ies), click the bubble or highlight multiple bubbles using your mouse, or use the drop down menu.
• To release your selection, click on the axis (diabetes rate) or use the drop down menu. Remember to release your selection on County to return to overall view. (I’m yet to figure out how to do this more effectively) The profiles (graphs on the bottom) will change according to the area you select (region, state or county). The characteristics are sorted by the difference between community profile vs overall US profile.