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BIOS/MATH 130 Spring 2023

Some additional data set ideas

If you are looking for additional data sets and have an interest in history, here are a few possibilities, though you'll want to check with Prof. Meyer about how you intend to use them. 

1. Local Spanish flu data from St. Luke's Hospital can be found by going here, selecting the "items" category and then narrowing by "reports" (on the right or you may have to scroll to the bottom, depending on your browser). 

62 items come up. Here is an example of one of the reports. Page. 32 in the document itself (p. 35 from the browser numbering), ) talks about the Spanish influenza. Page 39 in the document itself has data for Influenza and Influenza, pneumonia. You would have to determine how many of these cases were specifically for Spanish influenza. Check over the other reports that come up as well for data for surrounding years. If you want to see the hard copies of these reports, check with Special Collections in Linderman 
 
Here is a dissertation written at Lehigh about the Spanish Flu in this region. It might provide context for data analysis.

Higgins, James E.  Title: Keystone of an epidemic: Pennsylvania's urban experience during the 1918–1920 influenza epidemic
2009. 

In this context, you may find the datasets here of interest:
https://github.com/markushlang/spanishflu

"The sources for the datasets contained in the package come from Alfred W. Crosby’s (2003) book “America’s Forgotten Pandemic”. It provides key context for all the datasets. In addition to Crosby’s data, I also added data on non-pharmaceutical interventions by larger U.S. cities during the 1918 and 1919 outbreak from Howard Markel and colleagues."

**Do a Google search on: spanish flu dataset to search for other possibly relevant datasets or background information.**

2."Slum Clearance Maps and Charts"

See here for a description of  this resource which may be another source of data for your assignment; it concerns this topic, "..the Slum Clearance Committee utilized geographic charts to map health and economic data in New York City neighborhoods in the 1930s." Using it may require you to divvy up the data on the maps into geographic blocks and do some statistical analysis of correlations or variation in various variables between different parts of New York. The print version of this item is in Special Collections.