Olivia Das

Anthropology 3771-001
Dr. Kimberly Williams
September 29 2017

1. Create SPSS data set.a.Properly code binary variables, label variables, and define variables by
type.(12.5points)b. Include a table (of your own creation in excel or word) that shows the name
of the variable, the number of decimal places, variable label, variable values (for continuous
variables give a range of values, and for other kinds of variables list all variable values and their
codes), and data type. Do not just provide a screen shot of variable view from
SPSS.(12.5points)

Variable Name Decimal Variable Variable Data Types

Places Value Label
Age 0 Scale
Number of 0 NONE Scale
subjects
Weight 2 NONE Ordinal
Height 2 NONE Ordinal
BMI 2 NONE Ordinal
Sex 0 1-F, 2-M Nominal
stuntcent 0 NONE % stunted Scale
Wasted cent 2 NONE % wasted Scale
severely wasted 2 NONE % severely Scale
wasted
Underweight 2 NONE % Scale
cent underweight
Severely 2 NONE % severely Scale
underweightcen underweight
t
Tibia Length 2 NONE SOS Tibia Scale
Radius length 2 NONE SOS Radius Scale

II.Describe the data set.

a.In words write a paragraph or two that explains what these variables are. -that includes what
the variables mean (except in obvious cases like age, sex, etc.). Describe in words the
characteristics of the data set. No quoting from the article is permitted you must use your own
words to simply tell me what the key characteristics of the data are. (12.5 points)
Age, n, weight, height, Body Mass Index and sex are self-explanatory variables that
describe exactly what the variables represent. Sex is a nominal and a dichotomous variable-it can
be either male or female, but there is no intrinsic order to the variables. When coding for it in
SPSS, I put female as 1 and male as 2. Age and the number of participants are variables that can
be put on a scale. Age is an interval variable. The percentage of stunted, wasted and underweight
individuals are also interval variables, existing along a scale. SOS Tibia and SOS Radius are
continuous scale variables, measuring the time it took for the sonometer to bounce a sound wave
off of the bone and back.
This data was collected during the Jiri Growth Study at the Jiri Helminth Project Clinic. It
is meant to describe the weight, height, BMI and bone radii of 860 individuals, 426 boys and 434
girls, ages 5 to 18 years and compare it to WHO standards. It was found that a lot of the children
would be considered stunted and underweight according to the WHO, but it must be taken into
account that southeast Asians have different bone density and muscle mass. Even then, fragile
bones lead to osteopenia and osteoporosis, and as such a population that is vulnerable to
radiation, they must be monitored and assessed for sickness. SOS stands for speed of sound, and
the Sunlight Omnisense 7000P is a portable, non-invasive and inexpensive sonometer that
measures how fast the sound wave bounces through a limb that is being measured. Soft tissue
can slow down the wave, but the Jirel adolescent population is small and very lean, so that was
not a problem. All 860 children were free from any illnesses and developmental disabilities.
The rate of stunting was higher for males in late adolescence, and after age 15, girls had
significantly higher mean SOS than males. When this data was compared to data collected for
similar experiments conducted in Mexico, Turkey and Israel, it was seen that the Jirel children
reached puberty around the same time as the others and higher mean SOS scores around the
12-14 age mark. The Jirel children walk a lot on rugged terrain, which heavily affects cortical
bone development, slowing down and in some cases, preventing stunting of bone growth. They
were shorter than the children in the Portuguese population, but had similar or higher mean SOS
values for both bones in the Mexican population, and lower mean SOS values for the Portuguese
children in the other study.
Male and female Jiri children have similar early childhood growth rates until age 15 for
men, which is there is a drop in mean SOS score. Height for 42.9% of females and 53.1% of
males was stunted, with 20% of males being severely stunted and 17.6% severe stunting for
females. Wasting was more visible in 8 year old female children than the 8 year old male
children.
 b. Describe the data in tables, figures, charts whatever format you think is best. Beware,
do not produce too many or two few tables/charts/figures. Provide a rational about which and
how many visuals you create to describe the data.(12.5 points) why are we putting certain points
together or why not and the results.
Chart 1: Stunted growth of females vs Age

Chart 2: Percentage of stunted females vs. Age

Chart 3: Percentage of stunted females who were wasted, severely wasted and/or stunted

Blue: percentage stunted

Red: percentage wasted
Yellow: Percentage severely wasted

Chart 4: Percentage of stunted males compared to age

Chart 5: Percentage of stunted males compared to age, in sideways bar chart.

Chart 6: Percentage of males who were stunted, severely wasted and/or wasted

Blue: percentage stunted

Red: percentage wasted
Yellow: Percentage severely wasted
Chart 7: Female Jirel Age to Weight, Height and BMI comparison

Chart 8: COmparison of Weight, Height and BMI to Jirel Male Age

Chart 9: Comparison of percentage stunted for Jirel females with log SOS radius and log SOS
tibia

Chart 10: Stunt percentage for Jirel males compared to SOS radius and SOS tobia measurements

The graphs I made above were to show how there was correlation between mean SOS scores and
stunting, along with correlations between BMI, height and weight for stunting and wasting. No
Z-score measurements were used while making these charts. I tried to demonstrate the relations
between bone thickness and nutrition levels, as well as height, stunt percentage, age and BMI for
both sexes.
With the charts, some things are not immediately apparent, and it is easier to look to the text for
confirmation of any patterns shown by the data than to solely rely on the charts themselves.
Several of the conclusions drawn are fuzzy unless one looks at them quite intently.
I took log values for the tibia and radius measurements because they were huge values compared
to the stunt percentage, and I wanted to show if there was any relation between that and the SOS
values.

III. Discuss how the table/figure/charts you use above communicate the same or different
information compared with the narrative you provided in IIa. Discuss the power of the visual
versus the power of the text to communicate important information about the data set.(25 points)

I think that if I had to understand the data, it would be far easier for me to use the visuals as the
primary way to explain the data, because there it would be easier to make certain inferences and I
could grasp the information much faster than by reading it in the form of text and tables, as it is
in the original paper. The brain works with primarily visual processing of data (A. Paivio, 1968).
This is called the picture superiority effect. It is also related to the method of loci; a way to
remember large amounts of things without using paper by linking a fact to a familiar object.
The problem with using primarily visuals to explain a concept is that you can manipulate that
data to show something else entirely. For example. Andrew Wakefield manipulated data to imply
a cause for autism and the MMR vaccine and now easily preventable diseases have been rising in
frequency due to people not vaccinating their children. One could look at a chart of statistics for
divorces and see that theyve gone up considerably from the 1900s, but that could be because it
is now less financially risky to leave your husband, since youre no longer considered his
property.

IV.Aggregate the data in two different ways not used above. Present these aggregated data (in
both text and visuals). You can choose any variable(s) that make sense. Discuss how you chose
the variable(s)and concepts of precision/accuracy and how those changed because of the data
aggregation you performed. (25points)
Precision describes how close two results are to each other, whereas accuracy is the distance
from the measured value to the accurate value. Accuracy and precision are unrelated to each
other. For example, if I were to shoot 20 bullets and they were all clustered within an inch of
each other on the lower left quadrant of the target, my shooting would be precise but inaccurate,
because it is far from the bullseye but all of the bullets are close to each other.

To show this, I took the two variables, sex and percentage of those stunted, as females had less
stunting than males (females are generally smaller in muscle/bone density than males-another
reason to send us to Mars for exploratory missions). Using age as the independent variable, I
made a chart for female and % stunted. If I were to omit the data below 5.00%, my chart would
look more like this:

It seems as if there are no female children who have stunted growth (according to WHO
standards) for ages 5 and below. One could then wrongly theorize that children follow normal
growth patterns until age 9, which is when something slows down their growth and development.
The second chart contains the exact same data as Chart 1. It is presented in a hugely different
format however:

This chart makes absolutely no sense at all. What are the gauges for? There arent this many on
an airplane. What are we measuring here? There are no clear numbers on the dial of the gauges,
so we arent even sure how accurate it's supposed to be. The graph only gives us an idea of
where we could expect a certain number to be for a certain age group. This is an example of
using a graph that only confuses people and has no clear visualization or presentation.