Sunday, 11 February 2018

Data Assignment Update 1: Firefighter casualties since 2000

1. What dataset will you use for your final report?
2. What kind of data does your dataset contain?
3. Is there anything about your dataset that you don't understand?
4. What are some questions you hope to answer with your dataset?

I chose for my final report to analyze a data set released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that looked at the fatalities of firefighters in the United States since the year 2000. The set was last updated to include the deaths of all United States firefighters in 2015. 

The set includes the name, age, rank, cause of death, and a variety of additional information regarding each firefighter's passing. 

Most of the information presented in this dataset is straightforward, but the duty, activity, and property type columns are a confusing. The duty and activity columns are very similar, with the duty column representing the assigned shift of the service member before his/her death, while the activity column represents the specific job the firefighter was doing right before his/her death. The property column simply represents the place the person passed, whether on a street, at a public assembly, a store, or a variety of other places.

Some questions I hope to answer with this dataset would include, whether younger firefighters (-30) are more likely at risk of death from a trauma incident such as an impact or fall. Younger firefighters would be considered as less experienced and maybe willing to take bigger risks? How many firefighters subsequently died of respiratory ailments, post 911, because of lung problems inherited on that day or whether the safety of firefighters has improved over the last 15 years by looking at the number of deaths each year and seeing if it has decreased significantly since 2000.

5 comments:

  1. This is a very unique dataset that will be fascinating for you to interact with. I think you have selected great questions. It will be interesting to look into the correlation of respiratory ailments in firefighters post 9/11. It would also be beneficial to see the trends based on the month to understand if there is a time of year where more incidents occur.

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  2. Hey Marcus,

    I really liked the questions you're hoping to answer. It's going to be really interesting to see the answers for younger fire fighters being more or less likely to take bigger risks and seeing how that effects the life expectancy for this type of job.

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  3. I think your questions will help you find new information on firefighters, especially on the younger and less experienced ones. It's a unique group to look at because people may not be taking them into consideration when their looking at stats about firefighters.

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  4. An interesting data set to look at, especially since that one seems like it's often overlooked. Though, could you possibly post a visual of the chart on your blog itself?

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  5. There are a lot more heart attacks than I expected from this dataset, especially from firefighters responding to an emergency call and on the way to the fire. I think you'll be able to find out lots of interesting information. It would be nice if this dataset had the city of the incident to see if the incidents on the same date are together or not.

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