How to effectively use interactivity to improve visual analysis in groups of novices or experts

This study contributes with a methodology to evaluate the differences between different groups of individuals, using a prototype with different interactive visualizations, created with the Shiny package, using 6 quantitative and qualitative metrics for the validation. Using an ANOVA single factor test only 1 of the 6 variables showed statistically significant differences between both groups: the engagement. This means that this is the only metric where results can be improved in order to close the gap between the group of experts and novices. The heatmap and the bar chart were considered the best visualizations for both groups, and the worst were the choropleth map and the stacked bar chart. Regarding the interactive component, the select box was a better option for the group of novices and the radio box for the group of experts. Using this study, organizations will be able to create visualizations that are suitable for different audiences

How to effectively use interactivity to improve visual analysis and communication in groups of novices or experts

Project Work presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceConseguir passar um ponto de vista claro através da visualização de dados é um dos principais objetivos das organizações dos dias de hoje. O principal objetivo deste projeto foi perceber qual a melhor maneira de utilizar interatividade em diferentes tipos de indivíduos, especialistas e novatos, e descobrir as principais diferenças entre os dois grupos. Isto foi feito através da criação de um protótipo com diversas visualizações interativas, onde em cada uma delas foram utilizadas diferentes técnicas de visualização e interatividade. Após a sua criação, seguiu-se a validação de cada uma delas, de modo a chegar a conclusões sobre os melhores métodos a utilizar para melhorar a análise e comunicação da informação, para os diferentes grupos de indivíduos. O desenvolvimento do protótipo foi realizado com o software R, mais especificamente o pacote Shiny. O estudo contribuiu com uma metodologia para avaliar as diferenças entre grupos de especialistas e de novatos, relativamente ao protótipo de visualização que foi validado recorrendo a 6 medidas quantitativas e qualitativas. Utilizando um teste ANOVA de fator único foi possível concluir que em relação às medidas quantitativas não foram encontradas diferenças com significância estatística e em relação às medidas qualitativas a única medida que mostrou diferenças com significância estatística entre ambos os grupos foi o nível de interação (engagement). Isto significa que esta é a única métrica possível de melhorar para diminuir as diferenças entre ambos os grupos. Em relação às visualizações ambos os grupos, concordaram que as melhores foram o mapa de calor (heatmap) e o gráfico de barras e as piores visualizações foram o mapa coropleto e o gráfico de barras empilhadas. Houve, no entanto, diferenças entre a forma como os diferentes grupos interagiram com os componentes. Por exemplo, a select box foi uma melhor opção para o grupo de novatos, enquanto que a radio box foi a melhor para o grupo de especialistas. Os tooltips e o slider foram adequados para os dois tipos de indivíduos. Também foi comprovado que o pacote Shiny é uma ferramenta capaz de criar visualizações interativas eficazes para diferentes tipos de indivíduos uma vez que, em média, os participantes obtiveram ótimos resultados utilizando medidas qualitativas ou quantitativas. Os resultados deste estudo, permitirão às organizações a adaptação eficiente das suas visualizações a diferentes tipos de audiência.Getting a clear point of view through data visualization is one of the main goals of todays’ organizations. The main objective of this project was to understand the most efficient way to use interactivity in different groups of individuals, experts and novices, and to discover the main differences between these two groups. This was achieved through the creation of a prototype with several interactive visualizations, where in each of them different visualizations and interaction techniques were used. After the creation of the prototype, the next step was the validation of each one of them to reach conclusions on what are the most effective means to improve visual analysis and communication, in different groups of individuals. The development of the prototype was done using the R software, and most specifically the Shiny package. This study contributed with a methodology to evaluate the differences between experts and novices, using the visualization prototype that was validated with 6 quantitative and qualitative metrics. Using an ANOVA single factor test it was possible to conclude that regarding the quantitative measures no statistically significant differences were found. However, regarding the qualitative measures the only measure that had statistically significant differences between both groups was the engagement measure. This means that this is the only metric where results can be improved in order to close the gap between the group of experts and novices. Regarding the visualizations, both groups agreed that the best visualizations were the heatmap and the bar chart and the worst visualizations were the choropleth map and the stacked bar chart. Nevertheless, there were differences between how the different groups interacted with the components. For example, the select box was a better option for the novice’s group, while the radio box was the best for the expert’s group. The tooltips and the slider are adequate for both types of individuals. It was also proved that the Shiny package is a tool that is capable of creating effective interactive visualizations for different types of individuals, since that on average the participants obtained great results using qualitative or quantitative measures. The results of this study will allow organizations to efficiently adapt their visualizations to different types of audiences

Evenness mediates the global relationship between forest productivity and richness

1. Biodiversity is an important component of natural ecosystems, with higher species richness often correlating with an increase in ecosystem productivity. Yet, this relationship varies substantially across environments, typically becoming less pronounced at high levels of species richness. However, species richness alone cannot reflect all important properties of a community, including community evenness, which may mediate the relationship between biodiversity and productivity. If the evenness of a community correlates negatively with richness across forests globally, then a greater number of species may not always increase overall diversity and productivity of the system. Theoretical work and local empirical studies have shown that the effect of evenness on ecosystem functioning may be especially strong at high richness levels, yet the consistency of this remains untested at a global scale. 2. Here, we used a dataset of forests from across the globe, which includes composition, biomass accumulation and net primary productivity, to explore whether productivity correlates with community evenness and richness in a way that evenness appears to buffer the effect of richness. Specifically, we evaluated whether low levels of evenness in speciose communities correlate with the attenuation of the richness–productivity relationship. 3. We found that tree species richness and evenness are negatively correlated across forests globally, with highly speciose forests typically comprising a few dominant and many rare species. Furthermore, we found that the correlation between diversity and productivity changes with evenness: at low richness, uneven communities are more productive, while at high richness, even communities are more productive. 4. Synthesis. Collectively, these results demonstrate that evenness is an integral component of the relationship between biodiversity and productivity, and that the attenuating effect of richness on forest productivity might be partly explained by low evenness in speciose communities. Productivity generally increases with species richness, until reduced evenness limits the overall increases in community diversity. Our research suggests that evenness is a fundamental component of biodiversity–ecosystem function relationships, and is of critical importance for guiding conservation and sustainable ecosystem management decisions

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities(.)(1,2) This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity(3-6). Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55% of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017-and more than 80% in some low- and middle-income regions-was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing-and in some countries reversal-of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories.Peer reviewe

Height and body-mass index trajectories of school-aged children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019 in 200 countries and territories: a pooled analysis of 2181 population-based studies with 65 million participants

Summary Background Comparable global data on health and nutrition of school-aged children and adolescents are scarce. We aimed to estimate age trajectories and time trends in mean height and mean body-mass index (BMI), which measures weight gain beyond what is expected from height gain, for school-aged children and adolescents. Methods For this pooled analysis, we used a database of cardiometabolic risk factors collated by the Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration. We applied a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends from 1985 to 2019 in mean height and mean BMI in 1-year age groups for ages 5–19 years. The model allowed for non-linear changes over time in mean height and mean BMI and for non-linear changes with age of children and adolescents, including periods of rapid growth during adolescence. Findings We pooled data from 2181 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in 65 million participants in 200 countries and territories. In 2019, we estimated a difference of 20 cm or higher in mean height of 19-year-old adolescents between countries with the tallest populations (the Netherlands, Montenegro, Estonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina for boys; and the Netherlands, Montenegro, Denmark, and Iceland for girls) and those with the shortest populations (Timor-Leste, Laos, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea for boys; and Guatemala, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Timor-Leste for girls). In the same year, the difference between the highest mean BMI (in Pacific island countries, Kuwait, Bahrain, The Bahamas, Chile, the USA, and New Zealand for both boys and girls and in South Africa for girls) and lowest mean BMI (in India, Bangladesh, Timor-Leste, Ethiopia, and Chad for boys and girls; and in Japan and Romania for girls) was approximately 9–10 kg/m2. In some countries, children aged 5 years started with healthier height or BMI than the global median and, in some cases, as healthy as the best performing countries, but they became progressively less healthy compared with their comparators as they grew older by not growing as tall (eg, boys in Austria and Barbados, and girls in Belgium and Puerto Rico) or gaining too much weight for their height (eg, girls and boys in Kuwait, Bahrain, Fiji, Jamaica, and Mexico; and girls in South Africa and New Zealand). In other countries, growing children overtook the height of their comparators (eg, Latvia, Czech Republic, Morocco, and Iran) or curbed their weight gain (eg, Italy, France, and Croatia) in late childhood and adolescence. When changes in both height and BMI were considered, girls in South Korea, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and some central Asian countries (eg, Armenia and Azerbaijan), and boys in central and western Europe (eg, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, and Montenegro) had the healthiest changes in anthropometric status over the past 3·5 decades because, compared with children and adolescents in other countries, they had a much larger gain in height than they did in BMI. The unhealthiest changes—gaining too little height, too much weight for their height compared with children in other countries, or both—occurred in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, and the USA for boys and girls; in Malaysia and some Pacific island nations for boys; and in Mexico for girls. Interpretation The height and BMI trajectories over age and time of school-aged children and adolescents are highly variable across countries, which indicates heterogeneous nutritional quality and lifelong health advantages and risks

Heterogeneous contributions of change in population distribution of body mass index to change in obesity and underweight NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)

From 1985 to 2016, the prevalence of underweight decreased, and that of obesity and severe obesity increased, in most regions, with significant variation in the magnitude of these changes across regions. We investigated how much change in mean body mass index (BMI) explains changes in the prevalence of underweight, obesity, and severe obesity in different regions using data from 2896 population-based studies with 187 million participants. Changes in the prevalence of underweight and total obesity, and to a lesser extent severe obesity, are largely driven by shifts in the distribution of BMI, with smaller contributions from changes in the shape of the distribution. In East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the underweight tail of the BMI distribution was left behind as the distribution shifted. There is a need for policies that address all forms of malnutrition by making healthy foods accessible and affordable, while restricting unhealthy foods through fiscal and regulatory restrictions

A century of trends in adult human height

International audienc

Diminishing benefits of urban living for children and adolescents’ growth and development

Optimal growth and development in childhood and adolescence is crucial for lifelong health and well-being1–6. Here we used data from 2,325 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight from 71 million participants, to report the height and body-mass index (BMI) of children and adolescents aged 5–19 years on the basis of rural and urban place of residence in 200 countries and territories from 1990 to 2020. In 1990, children and adolescents residing in cities were taller than their rural counterparts in all but a few high-income countries. By 2020, the urban height advantage became smaller in most countries, and in many high-income western countries it reversed into a small urban-based disadvantage. The exception was for boys in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and in some countries in Oceania, south Asia and the region of central Asia, Middle East and north Africa. In these countries, successive cohorts of boys from rural places either did not gain height or possibly became shorter, and hence fell further behind their urban peers. The difference between the age-standardized mean BMI of children in urban and rural areas was <1.1 kg m–2 in the vast majority of countries. Within this small range, BMI increased slightly more in cities than in rural areas, except in south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and some countries in central and eastern Europe. Our results show that in much of the world, the growth and developmental advantages of living in cities have diminished in the twenty-first century, whereas in much of sub-Saharan Africa they have amplified