CHOLERA OUTBREAK IN STOCKHOLM: DATA ANALYSIS

The importance of data analysis is limitless. It is widely known to be helpful in decision making process, however, its usefulness goes beyond this.

Data Analysis is important for studying and understanding past events, identifying how past events were handled and ultimately, make important decisions that will prevent repetitions of similar events and to ensure that future performance exceed the previous ones. Analysis of past events may also be useful for documenting the details of past occurrences. This analysis therefore seeks to obtain information about the outbreak of cholera in Stockholm in the year 1853.

Data Source: Quantum Analytics NG

Tools Used: Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI and Google Sheet

Objective: To understand the occurrence, trend and gravity of cholera outbreak in Stockholm.

The 1853 Stockholm cholera outbreak was a severe epidemic which occurred in Stockholm, Sweden in 1853. This was an historical event which happened as a result of a waterborne disease, caused by a bacterium that led to severe diarrhea and dehydration.

DATA OVERVIEW

The Dataset used in this Analysis may be limited in several ways because it was collected in a church environment by writing. The data was put together in Saint Catherine Parish in Stockholm.

The data contained a total of 8 columns and 248 rows with each row containing information of a victim that died as a result of cholera outbreak in the community. The colums hold information about:

• Dödsdatum (Date of death)
• Namn (Name)
• Yrke (Profession)
• Kön (Sex)
• Ã…lder (Age)
• Församling (Assembly)
• Arkivref (Archive)
• Sida (Ref Page)

DATA CLEANING AND ANALYSIS

The dataset given was in Swedish Language, and for smooth and easy analysis, I started by translating this from Swedish to English.

I copied the given data from the excel file, opened Google Sheets and pasted the data. After copying, I moved to the next empty column and typed in the function to translate the document.

Note that: Source Language — Swedish and the Target Language — English. These are represented as “sv” and “en” respectively while translating using Google Sheets.

Hence, the function: =GOOGLE TRANSLATE(reference_cell, “sv”,”en”) was used to translate the document from Swedish to English.

And hence, a translated version of the data was obtained.

I created several other Columns like “Month Name”, “Day Name”, and a conditional Column named “Age Categories”. To categorize the ages into groups, I used a conditional column.

If Age ≤ 2- Babies

Age ≤ 16- Children

Age ≤ 30-Young Adults

Age ≤ 45 Middle Aged Adults

Age ≤ 59-Old Adults

Age ≤ 60 -Seniors

More columns were inserted to populate months and days in order to determine the trend of occurrence across different time frames. This was done by highlighting the column that contained the date of death, and selecting the date button. The name of day, and name of month was then obtained.

DATA VISUALIZATION

The following (KPIs) were calculated using the DAX measures. The formulars used are as follows:

Total No. of Death = COUNTROWS(‘Cholera Outbreak’)

Count of Male = Count of Male = COUNTROWS(FILTER(‘Cholera Outbreak’,’Cholera Outbreak’[Sex]=”MAN”))

Count of Female = COUNTROWS(FILTER(‘Cholera Outbreak’,’Cholera Outbreak’[Sex]=”WOMAN”))

Average Age = AVERAGE(‘Cholera Outbreak’[Age])

FINDINGS

• 248 deaths were recorded with a total of 130 female deaths and 118 male deaths. Hence, more Females died as a result of cholera outbreak in Stockholm, Sweden than Males.
• The outbreak of took place within a period of 4 months: August, September, October and November with the highest death recorded in September and the least death recorded in November.
• Taking a look at the daily trend of death, I observed that the highest deaths were recorded on Tuesdays and the least deaths were recorded on Sundays.
• Mamsell is the highest profession affected by this outbreak.

DASHBOARD

CONCLUSION

Even if one wasn’t alive to witness an occurrence of centuries ago, data analysis can still help paint an almost perfect picture by giving a detailed information of the event. This analysis has played a role of explaining the cholera outbreak that took place 2 centuries ago in Sweden.

Spotted a part that needs to be corrected? Kindly shoot me a message on LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/bello-mueezah-olajumoke. Your comment will go a long way in helping me become a better Data Analyst.

Thanks.