MATH 2032 – Statistics Using R
Project: COVID-19 pandemic data analysis
You will be investigating a problem of a COVID-19 pandemic across the two submission
points for the Project. Both submissions will require you to use R to load a data set
provided, prepare data for the analysis, answer a set of research questions, and prepare a
formal report on your findings. You will use two separate data sets in the two parts, with the
second being more challenging.
Assessment 2 - Project Part 1: Student instructions
REMEMBER: You will have to submit two files:
1. Written report as MS Word or PDF document;
2. R-script used to run data analysis.
Both files will be assessed and have equal weighting. That is, 50% of the mark would come from the
written report and 50% from the R-script.
The data set required for this part of the assessment is Project_Data1.csv. It can be downloaded
from the course web page.
The data set contains the information about COVID-19 cases in many countries around the world
starting from January 1, 2020 and finishing on December 13, 2021. The data set was downloaded
from Our World in Data website1 (ourworldindata.org).
For the part 1 of the project, you will be analysing only two countries. So, from the full data set
you have to extract the data for the United States and Russia only.
The data set has the following variables:
• Continent
• Location (country)
• Date
• Number of new cases
• Number of new deaths from COVID-19
• Some other variables that you don’t need for this assessment
Most of the variable names are self-explanatory.
1. WRITTEN REPORT (50%)
In your final report, you must present the following sections and address the points beneath them.
Any graphs or tables must be labelled appropriately with meaningful titles.
1 Hannah Ritchie, Edouard Mathieu, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Cameron Appel, Charlie Giattino, Esteban Ortiz-
Ospina, Joe Hasell, Bo
ie Macdonald, Diana Beltekian and Max Roser (2020) - "Coronavirus Pandemic
(COVID-19)". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from:
'https:
ourworldindata.org/coronavirus' [Online Resource]
INTRODUCTION: (10%)
Write an introduction for the research problem (COVID-19 pandemic analysis on the
example of two countries: United States and Russia) and for the data set. Describe the data
set, the variables, and the analyses used. There is no need to discuss variables that are not
used for the analysis.
ANALYSIS: (25%)
Provide numerical and graphical summaries for the number of new cases and the number
of new deaths in each country.
o What are the right measures of centrality and dispersion?
o Are there any outliers?
o Provide a
ief statement describing your findings.
o Calculate mortality rates for each country, that is, a ratio of the number of died to
the number of infected.
o What country better fight against COVID-19?
Extract data and plot historical graphs of the number of new cases in the United States and
Russia.
o Are there any patterns in the data?
o Provide a
ief statement describing your findings.
o What are similarities and differences in the number of new cases in the United
States and Russia?
Build a scatterplot of the number of new cases versus the number of new deaths in the
United States only.
o Are there any patterns in the data?
o Can you make a logical connection between historical plot in the previous question
and scatterplot for a better data understanding?
o Provide a
ief statement describing your findings.
*NOTE: For the purpose of this assignment “
ief statement” means one paragraph of 4 to 8 lines.
SUMMARY/CONCLUSION: (5%)
Based on the data and your analysis, provide a
ief discussion summarising/interpreting the
esults of the analyses you performed, and make a conclusion about the situation with
COVID-19 in two countries.
PRESENTATION: (10%)
You report need to include the following components: title, section headings (and sub-headings
where appropriate) and page numbers. Tables and graphs must have appropriate headings. Report
should be suitable for non-technical audience.
IMPORTANT: Do not include R-code or screenshots with R output from RStudio in
the Written Report. Your audience are not programmers, and they do not want
to see the code. Your R-code and its output will be reviewed separately in the R-
script you submit with the report.
2. R-SCRIPT FILE (50%)
The second file you must submit for Assessment 2: Part 1 is the R-script file used to perform all
analyses used in the report.
As you prepare your final R-script file for submission, ensure you consider the following criteria:
• Use a clear programming style with comments, meaningful variable and function names.
• Use the co
ect code to support your answers for the requested analyses, including any
manipulation of the data in order to conduct analyses.
• Optimise your code
o it might be impossible to avoid loops altogether, however you should aim to
minimise use of loops where possible and use vectorisation. Be sure to comment
and justify your use of loops where unavoidable.
• Your code should run successfully on other computers without any changes.
o Don’t use hard-coded path to data files.
o You can assume that any required package is already installed, you just need to load
it before using.
MATH 2032 – Statistics Using R
Project: COVID-19 pandemic data analysis
Assessment 2 - Project Part 1: Student instructions