Can an actuary / mathematician / data analyst say anything objective and data-oriented about the 2024 US presidential campaign?
Yes, if I confine my remarks to a numerical text analysis of the candidates' words, rather than attempt to comment on the candidates' political and economic views. This analysis is based solely on data that I collected from the two convention speeches.
I performed a sentiment analysis of the candidates' emotional words. Here is a graphical summary, discussion to follow:
Sentiment analysis
Most frequent words
Summary statistics
This is intended as an objective analysis. I am not trying to make either candidate look good, or bad. I have used these same text analysis techniques in other projects such as analyzing Hamlet, analying short stories, and analyzing the Twitter tweets of a radio talk show host.
For each of Trump and Harris, I started with a transcript of their convention sppeches. I believe the transcripts are their spoken transcripts, not their written transcripts, based on their very first few sentences. I used various computer packages in R such as tm and tidytext to tokenize the documents into individual sentences, words, and characters. I was guided by the works of Silge and Robinson in Text Mining with R and Williams in Data Science Desktop Survival Guide.
A summary and a comparison of the of the tokenization of the speeches is the following, repeated from before.
Sentiment analysis ia analyzing text to determine its emotional tone. Linguistics experts have built dictionaries that associate a large list of words with eight emotions (anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise, and trust) and also negative and positive sentiments. For example, the word "ache" is associated with sadness. Some words have more than one emotion; for example "admirable" is associated with both joy and trust. Further, some words have either negative or positive associations.
There are some limitations in sentiment analysis. The sentiment dictionary does not recognize sarcasm, and I am limiting my analysis to single words so I am not picking up negation (such as "not expensive") or other instances where the emotion requires several words. A conclusion from the sentiment distribution graph is that the candidates are surprisingly similar in most of these emotions. The biggest differences are that Trump has a greater portion of his words categorized as anger and negative than Harris has.
Most frequent positive and megative words
Trump has a larger percentage of negative words (negative divided by positive plus negative) than Harris (43% to 37%). These positive and negative lists seem consistent with my memory of their speeches.
Most frequent words
Distribution of word sizes
Final thoughts
It is hard to be indifferent about the 2024 US presidential election. You have your opinion, and I have mine.
Much of what the candidates say is their opinion, or their plan if elected, and these things are not things we can
verify.
Some things the candidates say as if they are facts, are stated in a way that is open to interpretation. A good example is that "You are better (or worse) off financially today than four years ago." I can choose one measure, collect some data, and show I am better off; or I can choose a very different measure, collect some data, and show I am worse off.
Some things the candidates say as facts ARE verifiable. I am in no position to do such verifying, but a number of third parties do this. Here are a few links. I can not vouch for their reliability or bias.
The following is my R code:
# Trump convention speech, July 19, 2024
# Harris convention speech, August 23, 2024
library(tidytext)
speaker <- readline(prompt = "Enter Trump, or enter Harris: ")
docs <- Corpus(VectorSource(text_df$text))
custom_colors <- c("#1f77b4", "#ff7f0e", "#2ca02c", "#d62728", "#9467bd",
common_theme <- theme(
docs_df <- data.frame(text = sapply(docs, as.character)) # Convert Corpus to data.frame
wordcountdist <- wordcountfile %>% count(numbchars)
syls <- nsyllable(wordfile$word, language = "en")
# Flesch-Kincaid reading ease formula
# Function to find the grade based on score; vlookup
score_to_find <- flesch
# delete stop words
wordfreq <- wordfile
unique_words <- nrow(wordfreq)
graphtitle <- paste(speaker, "Word Frequency")
# sentiments; note mother is both positive and negative!
sentiment_colors <- c(
title <- paste(speaker, "- Sentiment Plot")
df4 <- df3 %>% filter(sentiment == "positive" | sentiment == "negative")
title <- paste(speaker, "- Most Frequent Positive and Negative Words")
if (speaker == "Trump"){
# the results of stemming and lemmatizing were not used in the report
# lemmatize
# if word is not in dictionary, then leave word as is; otherwise, use stemmed word.
# End
# https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/19/us/politics/trump-rnc-speech-transcript.html
# https://singjupost.com/full-transcript-kamala-harriss-2024-dnc-speech/?singlepage=1
library(tm)
library(dplyr)
library(nsyllable)
library(SnowballC)
library(ggplot2)
library(forcats)
library(ggpubr)
if (speaker == "Trump" | speaker == "Harris") print(speaker) else print("Invalid input")
trump_file <- "C:/Users/Jerry/Desktop/Harris_Trump/trump_convention_speech.txt"
harris_file <- "C:/Users/Jerry/Desktop/Harris_Trump/harris_convention_speech.txt"
textfile <- ifelse(speaker=="Trump", trump_file, harris_file)
textfile <- readLines(textfile)
text_df <- data.frame(line = 1:length(textfile), text=textfile)
names(text_df)[2] <- "text"
docs <- tm_map(docs, content_transformer(tolower))
docs <- tm_map(docs, removeNumbers)
docs <- tm_map(docs, removePunctuation, ucp=TRUE)
docs <- tm_map(docs, stripWhitespace)
inspect(docs[1:8])
"#8c564b", "#e377c2", "#7f7f7f", "#bcbd22", "#17becf",
"#6a3d9a", "#ff9e1b", "#f6c6c7", "#8dd3c7", "#ffffb3",
"#bebada", "#fb8072", "#80b1d3", "#fdb462", "#b3e2cd",
"#ccebc5")
legend.position="NULL",
plot.title = element_text(size=15, face="bold"),
plot.subtitle = element_text(size=12.5, face="bold"),
axis.title = element_text(size=15, face="bold"),
axis.text = element_text(size=15, face="bold"),
legend.title = element_text(size=15, face="bold"),
legend.text = element_text(size=15, face="bold"))
wordfile <- unnest_tokens(docs_df, word, text, token = "words")
wordfile %>% count(word, sort=TRUE)
wordcountfile <- mutate(wordfile, numbchars = nchar(word)) # characters per word
long1 <- wordcountfile[which(wordcountfile$numbchars == max(wordcountfile$numbchars)),1] # longest word
long2 <- wordcountfile[which(wordcountfile$numbchars == max(wordcountfile$numbchars)),2]
numberchars <- sum(wordcountfile$numbchars)
numberwords <- sum(count(wordcountfile, word, sort=TRUE)$n) # no. words
avgcharperword <- round(numberchars / numberwords, digits=2)
sentencefile <- unnest_tokens(text_df, sentence, text, token = "sentences")
sentencecount <- sum(count(sentencefile, sentence, sort=TRUE)$n)
avgwordpersent <- round(numberwords/sentencecount,2)
wordcountdist$numbchars <- as.factor(wordcountdist$numbchars)
title <- paste(speaker, "- Distribution of Word Size")
subtitle <- paste("Longest word: ", long1, long2, "characters")
ggplot(wordcountdist, aes(numbchars, n, fill=numbchars)) +
geom_bar(stat="identity", position = "dodge", width=0.5) +
labs(title=title, subtitle=subtitle) +
xlab("number of characters per word") + ylab("") +
scale_fill_manual(values = custom_colors) +
theme(legend.position = "none") +
common_theme
syls[which(wordfile$word == "jd")] <- 2 # used because nsyllable generated error here
syls[which(wordfile$word == "nd")] <- 1 # used because nsyllable generated error here
syls[which(wordfile$word == "st")] <- 3 # s/b 21st; used because nsyllable generated error here
syls[which(wordfile$word == "gasolinepowered")] <- 5 # used because nsyllable erred here
long2 <- min(syls[(syls == max(syls, na.rm=TRUE))], na.rm=TRUE)
w <- min(which(syls == long2))
long1 <- wordfile$word[w]
avgsylperword <- round(sum(syls)/numberwords, digits = 2)
avgsylperword
syls <- data.frame(syls) %>% count(syls)
syls$syls <- as.factor(syls$syls)
colnames(syls) <- c("syllables", "n")
title <- paste(speaker, "- Distribution of No. Syllables per Word")
subtitle <- paste("Most syllables: ", long1, long2, "syllables")
ggplot(syls, aes(syllables, n, fill = syllables)) +
geom_bar(stat="identity", position = "dodge", width=0.5) +
labs(title=title, subtitle=subtitle) +
xlab("number of syllables per word") + ylab("") +
scale_fill_manual(values = custom_colors) +
theme(legend.position = "none") +
common_theme
flesch <- round(206.835 - 1.015*(numberwords/sentencecount) - 84.6*(sum(syls$n)/numberwords),2) # Flesch reading ease
flesch
flesch_df <- data.frame(score = c(0,30,50,60,70,80,90,100),
grade = c("College graduate","College","10th - 12th grade","8th - 9th grade",
"7th grade","6th grade","5th grade","below 5th grade"))
find_grade <- function(score, flesch_df) {
idx <- findInterval(score, flesch_df$score)
if (idx == 0) {
return("below 5th grade") # Handle case where score is below the minimum
} else {
return(flesch_df$grade[idx])
}
}
flesch_grade <- find_grade(score_to_find, flesch_df)
flesch_grade
docs_df <- data.frame(text = sapply(docs, as.character)) # Convert Corpus to data.frame
wordfile <- unnest_tokens(docs_df, word, text, token = "words")
stop_words <- data.frame(tidytext::stop_words) # more words than tm
my_stop_words <- data.frame(word = c("theyre", "hes", "dont",
"didnt","youre","cant", "im","whats", "weve", "theyve", "youve",
"couldnt", "wont", "youd"))
wordfile <- anti_join(wordfile, stop_words)
wordfile <- anti_join(wordfile, my_stop_words)
wordfreq <- count(wordfreq, word, sort=TRUE) # word frequency excl stop words
wordfreqdf <- data.frame(wordfreq)
portion_unique_words <- round(unique_words / numberwords, digits=2)
wordfreqdf20 <- wordfreqdf[1:21,] # Think about threshold
wordfreqdf20
wordfreqdf20$word <- fct_reorder(wordfreqdf20$word, wordfreqdf20$n, .desc = FALSE)
ggplot(data=wordfreqdf20, aes(x=word, y=n, fill=word)) +
geom_bar(stat="identity", position = "dodge", width=0.5) +
coord_flip() +
common_theme +
xlab("") + ylab("Frequency") +
ggtitle(graphtitle) +
scale_fill_manual(values = custom_colors) +
theme(legend.position = "none")
df1 <- data.frame(wordfile)
colnames(df1) <- "word"
df2 <- get_sentiments("nrc")
df3 <- merge(x=df1, y=df2, by="word", all.x=TRUE, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
df3 <- subset(df3, !is.na(sentiment))
table(df3$sentiment)
w <- data.frame(table(df3$sentiment))
colnames(w) <- c("sentiment", "n")
"Anger" = "red",
"Anticipation" = "green",
"Disgust" = "brown",
"Fear" = "purple",
"Joy" = "yellow",
"Negative" = "gray",
"Positive" = "lightblue",
"Sadness" = "blue",
"Surprise" = "pink",
"Trust" = "turquoise")
ggplot(w, aes(sentiment, n)) +
geom_bar(stat = "identity", position = "dodge", width = 0.5, fill = sentiment_colors) +
ggtitle(title) +
ylab("") +
common_theme +
theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 45, hjust=1))
w <- with(df4, table(sentiment))
neg <- w[1]
pos <- w[2]
neg_ratio <- round(w[1] / (w[1] + w[2]), digits=2)
df5 <- df4 %>% group_by(sentiment) %>% count(word, sort=TRUE)
pos_freq <- df5 %>% filter(sentiment=="positive") %>% top_n(10, wt = n) %>% slice_head(n = 10)
neg_freq <- df5 %>% filter(sentiment=="negative") %>% top_n(10, wt = n) %>% slice_head(n = 10) # ties
pos_freq$word <- fct_reorder(pos_freq$word, pos_freq$n, .desc = FALSE)
neg_freq$word <- fct_reorder(neg_freq$word, neg_freq$n, .desc = FALSE)
p1 <- ggplot(pos_freq, aes(word, n)) +
geom_bar(stat="identity", position = "dodge", width=0.5, fill="darkgreen") +
ggtitle("Positves") +
common_theme +
xlab("") +
coord_flip()
p2 <- ggplot(neg_freq, aes(word, n)) +
geom_bar(stat="identity", position = "dodge", width=0.5, fill="red") +
ggtitle("Negatives") +
common_theme +
xlab("") +
coord_flip()
plot <- ggarrange(p1,p2, ncol=2, nrow=1, legend=NULL)
annotate_figure(plot, top = text_grob(title,
color = "black", face = "bold", size = 14))
t <- data_frame(speaker, numberwords, avgwordpersent, avgcharperword, avgsylperword, flesch, flesch_grade, portion_unique_words, neg_ratio)
print(t)
} else {h <- data_frame(speaker, numberwords, avgwordpersent, avgcharperword, avgsylperword, flesch, flesch_grade, portion_unique_words, neg_ratio)
conclusion <- data.frame(rbind(t,h))
conclusion <- t(conclusion)
colnames(conclusion) <- c("Trump", "Harris")
conclusion <- conclusion[-1,]
print(conclusion)
}
# stemming
wordfile <- wordfile %>%
mutate(stem = wordStem(word)) %>%
count(stem, sort = TRUE)
df1 <- wordfile # df1 has col named stem
url <- "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/michmech/lemmatization-lists/master/lemmatization-en.txt"
df2 <- read.table(url, header = FALSE, sep = "\t", quote = "", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
names(df2) <- c("stem", "word")
df3 <- merge(x = df1, y = df2, by = "stem", all.x = TRUE, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
df3$word <- ifelse(is.na(df3$word), df3$stem, df3$stem)
Sunday, August 25, 2024
Text analysis of 2024 US Presidential convention speeches
Sunday, August 11, 2024
Is the Mona Lisa thinking about irrational numbers?
As a math teacher I sometimes share the following problem-solving strategy: If you are really stuck on a problem, let it sit, come back the next day, and maybe you will have a fresh insight. This often works for me.
58 years later ...
I recently applied this strategy with a problem posed by my beloved Bryant High School math teacher Anthony Holman. However, he posed it in 1966, so it took me 58 years before I had any insight. Unfortunately, Mr. Holman passed away in 1985, so I never had the opportunity to discuss this with him.
In calculus class Mr. Holman taught us about e, sometimes called Euler’s number, which is the base of the natural log function. He told us e, like π , would appear in many unlikely places in math, and of course he was right. Then he hypothesized that e and π and other famous irrational numbers were probably part of the great works of art like the Mona Lisa.
That was the only time I remember him making that statement. I had no idea how to approach it. This was 1966, long before computers, even mainframe computers, were readily available to the public. I forgot about his statement for about 55 years.
More recently I have been programming in R, and I have learned a little about computer images. A computer image can be represented as an array of many small elements called pixels, and every pixel is a base 16 number of the hex code of that pixel's color. I decided to interpret Mr. Holman’s hypothesis as whether a finite sequence of the digits of a number like π were contained within the pixel hex code of the Mona Lisa. I decided to separately test four famous irrational numbers: π, e, φ, and √2.
I am making a few assumptions here. An irrational number is an infinite, non-repeating decimal. I can not test whether an infinite sequence of digits appears within some other sequence of numbers. So I am truncating these irrational numbers to ten decimal places each, which I think is sufficient for this exercise. The tenth decimal place is truncated, not rounded. Of course the test may pass at ten decimal places and then fail at the eleventh.
Another assumption is that I have a sufficiently high-quality image of the original Mona Lisa. The painting was completed in approximately 1517. It has aged and there has been some physical restoration. A computer image is the result of a photograph, and these photographs also contain some digital retouching. So the result may not be equivalent to the original. Finally, there is a variety of available resolutions including one that has a size of 90 MB. I do not have sufficient computer memory to handle that file size and the calculations of a file that large.
I am also assuming it is sufficient to do this problem with just the Mona Lisa.
In my first attempt, I was able to get the base 16 number of the hex code of every pixel of my Mona Lisa file. The file looks like this for the first six pixels. I show each pixel's base 16 hex code and its base 10 decimal equivalent.
I decided the first attempt was faulty. The Mona Lisa was created in a base 10 world, and it didn’t make sense to force the irrationals into an artificial base 16 comparison.
In my second attempt, I converted each base 16 pixel to base 10, to compare against base 10 irrationals. I think this is a more natural comparison, and if an irrational is going to be contained in a larger sequence then it would be as a base ten irrational.
Unfortunately this also failed for each of the four irrationals. So sadly, I can not confirm Mr. Holman’s hypothesis. Maybe I should let this problem sit for a few more years and come back when I have a fresh idea (or when I buy a computer with more memory). Maybe Mr. Holman has solved it in Heaven. Nevertheless, I’m sure he is smiling at my efforts.
The following is my R code:
# Mona Lisa problem matching base 10 codes
library(imager)
# url1 is huge: 89.9 MB; url2 is 70 KB.
# use url2 unless you have a lot of memory.
url1 <- "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Mona_Lisa%2C_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci%2C_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg"
url2 <- "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Mona_Lisa%2C_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci%2C_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg/402px-Mona_Lisa%2C_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci%2C_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg"
img <- load.image(url2)
plot(img)
img_data <- as.data.frame(img)
head(img_data) # x, y, cc(color channel: r, g, b, transparent), intensity (normalized 0,1)
dim(img_data) # 722,394 x 4
library(dplyr)
img_data <- arrange(img_data, x, y, cc)
# Pivot the data to wide format so each pixel has its R, G, B values in separate columns
library(tidyr)
img_wide <- pivot_wider(img_data, names_from = cc, values_from = value, values_fill = list(value = 0)) # # If there are missing values, fill them with 0
dim(img_wide) # 240,798 x 5
# Convert normalized values to 0-255 range
img_wide$R <- img_wide$`1` * 255
img_wide$G <- img_wide$`2` * 255
img_wide$B <- img_wide$`3` * 255
# Convert RGB values to hexadecimal format
img_wide$hex <- rgb(img_wide$R, img_wide$G, img_wide$B, maxColorValue = 255)
img_wide$hex <- gsub('#', '', img_wide$hex)
# Convert hex values to decimal format
library(Rmpfr) # extended floating point computations
options(scipen = 999)
img_wide$dec <- as.numeric(mpfr(img_wide$hex, base=16))
# Check the structure of img_wide
head(img_wide)
# Concatenate dec values into a single string
dec_string <- paste(img_wide$dec, collapse = "")
nchar(dec_string) # 1701600
test_value1 <- "04111665813" # starts in position 2
pi_base10 <- "31415926535" # https://www.angio.net/pi/digits/50.txt 10 decimal places, truncated not rounded
e_base10 <- "27182818284" # https://www.i4cy.com/euler/
phi_base10 <- "16180339887" # https://nerdparadise.com/math/reference/phi10000
root_two_base10 <- "14142135623" # https://nerdparadise.com/math/reference/2sqrt10000
# Check if the dec string contains the digits of pi, e, phi, root 2
check_irrational <- function(value, name) {
if (grepl(value, dec_string)) {
cat("The first ten digits of", name, "are present in the pixel data.\n")
start_position <- regexpr(value, dec_string)
cat("The match starts at position:", start_position, "\n")
} else {
cat("The first ten digits of", name, "are not present in the pixel data.")
}
}
check_irrational(test_value1, "test1")
check_irrational(pi_base10, "π")
check_irrational(e_base10, "e")
check_irrational(phi_base10, "φ")
check_irrational(root_two_base10, "√2")
options(scipen = 0)
# END
#######################################
Wednesday, July 24, 2024
The distribution has changed; and pretty tables in base R
So you spent hours, or maybe days, cranking out thousands of numbers, you submit it to your boss just at the deadline, your boss quickly peruses your exhibit of numbers, points to a single number and says, "This number doesn't look right." Bosses have an uncanny ability to do this.
Your boss is pointing to something like this: Your company sells property insurance on both personal and commercial properties. The average personal property premium increased 10% in 2024. The average commercial property premium increased 10% in 2024. But you say the combined average property premium decreased 3% in 2024. You realize that negative 3% does not look right.
You might have made an input error or a calculation error, but you don't want to admit to that. So you blurt out, "That's because the distribution has changed." And to your relief, the boss buys into that.
"The distribution has changed" is probably a pretty good answer in more instances than you realize. A more common example is if your investment portfolio starts at 90% stocks and 10% bonds, but you have a good year with stocks, at year-end the distribution of your portfolio has changed to 94% stocks and 6% bonds, and you may want to rebalance your portfolio. How about the distribution of population by state? It has definitely changed since the prior Census. It might be hard to think of a non-trivial example of something where the distribution has not changed.
The key calculations are the 2023 average premium is (2000 * 90 + 10000 * 10) / (90 + 10) = 2800, the 2024 average premium is (2200 * 110 + 11000 * 7) / (110 + 7) = 2726, and so the average premium change is 2726 / 2800 = .97 (rounded) = - 3%. And the distribution between personal and commercial DID change, as measured either by the distribution of number of policies (was 90% personal, now 94%) or by the distribution of premium (was 64% personal, now 76%). So because the distribution has changed towards more smaller personal policies, this pulls the combined average premium down, even though the average premium for each of the two separate subgroups has increased. (There are alternatives to the key calculations, such as weighting the percentage changes, instead of weighting the average premiums.)
Years ago I posed a dilemma like this during job interviews for actuarial trainees to see how well they would respond to a sort of non-routine problem, but I decided it was too difficult.
I did the above exhibit in Excel because it was quick. It was also pretty easy to add custom colors to alternating rows, which I did via FONT > FILL > MORE COLORS > CUSTOM > enter HEX CODE. Here I chose cornsilk #fff8dc and cyan #00ffff for fun.
Then I wondered how easy it would be to make a pretty table in R.
If you google something like "pretty tables in R", you will find a number of R packages that create HTML type code that can be saved as an HTML file, a PDF file, or another file format. Much has been written about these packages, but they seem a little complicated for basic work, and further, I like the idea of staying exclusively within the R environment. When I realized a table is just a collection of rectangles, it occurred to me that the base R commands of rectangle and text are pretty much all I need.
Here is a table of sample rectangles with text, written in R. The rectangle syntax is rect(xleft, ybottom, xright, ytop, col, border) and the text syntax is text(x, y, labels, col, cex, font). The numerical axis is helpful when first defining the rectangles, but can be deleted by adding axes = FALSE to the plot function for the final table.
rect(0, 0, 250, 250, col = "#E41A1C", border = "blue")
rect(250, 0, 500, 250, col = "yellow", border = "blue")
rect(0, 250, 250, 500, col = "cornsilk", border = "blue")
rect(250, 250, 500, 500, col = "cyan", border = "blue")
The R equivalent of the Excel exhibit is the following. Note that all code is in base R.
rownames(df) = c("2023 Avg Prem", "2023 No. Policies","2024 Avg Prem", "2024 No. Policies", "Avg Prem % Change")
# rectangle syntax: rect(xleft, ybottom, xright, ytop)
plot(x = c(0, 500), y = c(0, 700), type= "n", xlab = "", ylab = "", axes = FALSE)
rect(0, 6*height, 500, 7*height, col = col1, border = "blue")
rect(0, 5*height, 200, 6*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
text(100, 5.5*height, "", col="blue")
rect(0, 4*height, 200, 5*height, col = col1, border = "blue")
text(100, 4.5*height, rownames(df)[1], col="blue")
rect(0, 3*height, 200, 4*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
text(100, 3.5*height, rownames(df)[2], col="blue")
rect(0, 2*height, 200, 3*height, col = col1, border = "blue")
text(100, 2.5*height, rownames(df)[3], col="blue")
rect(0, height, 200, 2*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
text(100, 1.5*height, rownames(df)[4], col="blue")
rect(0, 0, 200, height, col = col1, border = "blue")
text(100, .5*height, rownames(df)[5], col="blue")
par(op)
plot(x = c(0, 500), y = c(0, 500), type= "n", xlab = "", ylab = "", main = "Sample rectangles with text", cex=2, font=2)
text(125, 125, "red rectangle, white font", col="white", cex=1.15, font=2)
text(375, 125, "yellow rectangle, blue font", col="navyblue", cex=1.15, font=2)
text(125, 375, "cornsilk rectangle, black font", col="black", cex=1., font=2)
text(375, 375, "cyan rectangle, purple font", col="purple", cex=1.15, font=2) 
df <- data.frame(Personal = c(2000, 90, 2200, 110, 10),
Commercial = c(10000, 10, 11000, 7, 10),
Weighted = c(2800, 100, 2726, 117, -3))
df
op <- par(bg = "thistle")
col1 = "cornsilk"
col2 = "cyan"
height = 100
text(250, 6.5*height, title, col="black", cex=1.25, font=2)
rect(200, 5*height, 300, 6*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
rect(300, 5*height, 400, 6*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
rect(400, 5*height, 500, 6*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
text(250, 5.5*height, colnames(df)[1], col="blue")
text(350, 5.5*height, colnames(df)[2], col="blue")
text(450, 5.5*height, colnames(df)[3], col="blue")
rect(200, 4*height, 300, 5*height, col = col1, border = "blue")
rect(300, 4*height, 400, 5*height, col = col1, border = "blue")
rect(400, 4*height, 500, 5*height, col = col1, border = "blue")
text(250, 4.5*height, df[1,1], col="blue")
text(350, 4.5*height, df[1,2], col="blue")
text(450, 4.5*height, df[1,3], col="blue")
rect(200, 3*height, 300, 4*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
rect(300, 3*height, 400, 4*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
rect(400, 3*height, 500, 4*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
text(250, 3.5*height, df[2,1], col="blue")
text(350, 3.5*height, df[2,2], col="blue")
text(450, 3.5*height, df[2,3], col="blue")
rect(200, 2*height, 300, 3*height, col = col1, border = "blue")
rect(300, 2*height, 400, 3*height, col = col1, border = "blue")
rect(400, 2*height, 500, 3*height, col = col1, border = "blue")
text(250, 2.5*height, df[3,1], col="blue")
text(350, 2.5*height, df[3,2], col="blue")
text(450, 2.5*height, df[3,3], col="blue")
rect(200, height, 300, 2*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
rect(300, height, 400, 2*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
rect(400, height, 500, 2*height, col = col2, border = "blue")
text(250, 1.5*height, df[4,1], col="blue")
text(350, 1.5*height, df[4,2], col="blue")
text(450, 1.5*height, df[4,3], col="blue")
rect(200, 0, 300, height, col = col1, border = "blue")
rect(300, 0, 400, height, col = col1, border = "blue")
rect(400, 0, 500, height, col = col1, border = "blue")
text(250, .5*height, paste(df[5,1], "%"), col="black", cex=1.5)
text(350, .5*height, paste(df[5,2], "%"), col="black", cex=1.5)
text(450, .5*height, paste(df[5,3], "%"), col="black", cex=2, font=2)
#######################################
Thursday, July 18, 2024
Radar charts and five-tool baseball players
I was looking for an opportunity to practice with radar charts and I came across an article on five-tool baseball players, so this seemed like a perfect application for this kind of chart.
A radar chart is an alternative to a column chart to display three or more quantitative variables. The chart graphs the values in a circular manner around a center point.
The five tools in baseball are: (1) hitting for average; (2) hitting for power; (3) defense; (4) throwing; and (5) speed. A five-tool player excels in all five of these.
Among current players, Mike Trout is considered a five-tool player. The measurement of Trout’s five tools can be displayed in the following radar chart:
For comparison, here is a display of Aaron Judge's ratings.
The results of several players can be displayed in a single radar chart, but this becomes hard to read. Three players are probably the maximum for readability.
The numerical data above was obtained from an article by Jake Mintz in 2022 for Fox Sports https://www.foxsports.com/stories/mlb/trout-betts-rodriguez-the-definition-of-mlbs-five-tool-players . In Mintz's data, all numbers are shown rounded to the nearest 10. Mintz only has five current players as five-tool players: Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Trea Turner, Byron Buxton, and Julio Rodriguez. I tried graphing all five players in a single radar chart, but this was too hard to read. Mintz thinks a true five-tool player should have a grade of at least 60 in each of the five categories. By this measure, Aaron Judge is not quite a five-tool player due to a 50 in speed, and a number of elite major leaguers have at least one 50. Note that each category is considered separately. If there were some sort of weighting system, many people would weigh hitting with power as most important, followed by hitting for average, although perhaps the weights should vary by position with higher weights for defense and throwing for catcher, middle infielders, and center fielder. Pitchers have a different grading system.
What about Shohei Ohtani? At the time of his article, Mintz did not have sufficient data on Ohtani.
Mintz observes that Mike Trout worked one winter to improve his throwing, and Julio Rodriguez worked to increase his speed. This suggests that the ratings probably change over the life of a player and are dependent on when they are measured.
Other authors suggest that there is a sixth tool of exceptional players such as mental makeup and character. Another tool might be situational game awareness.
Modern motion tracking data by Statcast and others did not exist until fairly recently. Willie Mays is generally considered the greatest five-tool player. Using statistical measures, author Herm Krabbenhoft suggests Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb, and Honus Wagner should be considered as five tool players, although Krabbenhoft measures hitting for power with SLG (slugging percentage) and ISO (isolated power), not home runs https://sabr.org/journal/article/honus-wagner-baseballs-prototypical-five-tooler/ . A very different measure of hitting with power would be something like home run distance greater than 425 feet or launch angle and velocity.
What about Babe Ruth? We know Babe Ruth's career numbers are .342 batting average and 714 home runs. I have not read anything about his defense, throwing, or speed. He did steal 123 bases, including home 10 times; maybe he was faster than we realize. He is remembered for getting thrown out stealing second to end the 1926 World Series, but perhaps the hit-and-run play was on, and Bob Meusel, the batter, swung and missed the pitch? See https://baseballegg.com/2019/10/30/babe-ruths-failed-stolen-base-attempt-ended-the-1926-world-series-or-is-that-what-really-happened/ . Ruth had 204 assists as an outfielder, which sounds like a lot. I wonder how he would have ranked in defense, throwing, and speed?
Here is my R code. I do like radar charts for comparing one to three observations over five variables, as a change of pace from column charts. I used the fmsb library for the radar charts. There is also a ggradar library, but I did not like its visualization. One of the quirks of fmsb is that the axis for each variable can have its own scale. Originally I used each variable's max and min values, but the axes were out of sync, so I replaced this with the grand max and min. Also, I could not get the values, which are all multiples of ten, to line up on the concentric pentagons.
group = c("Hit_avg", "Hit_power", "Defense", "Throwing", "Speed")
# The row 1 should contain the maximum values for each variable
max_min <- data.frame(
rownames(max_min) <- c("Max", "Min") # row 1 has max's, row 2 has min's.
player1_data <- df[c("Max", "Min", player_names[1]), ]
chart <- function(data, color, title){
# Plot the data for players 1, 2, and 3 separately
# Plot the data for three players
###########################################
# column graphs
library(tibble)
# Common theme for graphs
# Create column graph: Tool Ratings by Player
# Create the column graph: Player Ratings for each Tool
### END
################################################################################## 
library(scales)
player_names = c("Trout","Betts","Judge")
players <- data.frame(
row.names = player_names,
Hit_avg = c(80, 70, 70),
Hit_power = c(70,60,80),
Defense = c(60,70,60),
Throwing = c(60,80,70),
Speed = c(60,70,50))
players
# The row 2 should contain the minimum values for each variable
# Data for cases or individuals should be given starting from row 3
# Define the variable ranges: maximum and minimum; however, want axes to have equal scales
Hit_avg = c(max(players), min(players)),
Hit_power = c(max(players), min(players)),
Defense = c(max(players), min(players)),
Throwing = c(max(players), min(players)),
Speed = c(max(players), min(players)))
df <- rbind(max_min, players)
df
player2_data <- df[c("Max", "Min", player_names[2]), ]
player3_data <- df[c("Max", "Min", player_names[3]), ]
radarchart(data, axistype = 0,
pcol = color, pfcol = scales::alpha(color, 0.5), plwd = 2, plty = 1,
vlabels = colnames(data), vlcex = 1.5,
cglcol = "black", cglty = 1, cglwd = 0.8,
caxislabels = NULL,
title = title)
}
chart(data=player1_data, color="#00AFBB", title="MIKE TROUT 5 Tools")
chart(data=player2_data, color="#E7B800", title="MOOKIE BETTS 5 Tools")
chart(data=player3_data, color="#FC4E07", title="AARON JUDGE 5 Tools")
chart(data=df, color=c("#00AFBB", "#E7B800", "#FC4E07"), # blue-green, red-green, red-green
title="TROUT, BETTS, JUDGE 5 Tools")
legend(
x = "bottom", legend = rownames(df[-c(1,2),]), horiz = FALSE,
bty = "n", pch = 20 , col = c("#00AFBB", "#E7B800", "#FC4E07"),
text.col = "black", cex = 1.25, pt.cex = 1.5)
library(tidyr)
library(ggplot2)
# Reshape data to long format
players_long <- players %>%
rownames_to_column("player") %>%
pivot_longer(cols = -player, names_to = "group", values_to = "value")
common_theme <- theme(
legend.position="right",
plot.title = element_text(size=15, face="bold"),
axis.title = element_text(size=15, face="bold"),
axis.text = element_text(size=15, face="bold"),
legend.title = element_text(size=15, face="bold"),
legend.text = element_text(size=15, face="bold"))
ggplot(players_long, aes(x = player, y = value, fill = group, title = "Tool Ratings by Player")) +
geom_col(position = "dodge") +
labs(x = "Player", y = "Rating", fill = "Group") +
common_theme
ggplot(players_long, aes(x = group, y = value, fill = player)) +
geom_col(position = "dodge") +
labs(x = "Group", y = "Rating", fill = "Player", title = "Player Ratings for each Tool") +
common_theme
Sunday, June 23, 2024
Something a llttle different: Hexbin maps
I recently became acquainted with hexbin maps, so I thought I would experiment with one. In a hexbin map, each geographical region is represented by an equally sized regular hexagon. (A regular hexagon can tessellate a plane, one of only three regular polygons that can do so besides an equilateral triangle and a square.) A hexbin map can be used to illustrate the distribution of a categorical variable by using colors, at a cost that geographical areas are distorted by size, shape, and orientation. Here is a hexbin map, followed by the same data in a conventional map. The four categories represent which of the two political parties had the larger popular vote in the 2020 presidential election and by what margin over the other party.
# Hexbin map
For the conventional map, I used the R usmap library.
A hexbin map is a nice alternative to a conventional map. With a conventional map, it's hard to read those small states. Howwever,
it is not the right visualization tool if the data is quantitative. It is also not the right tool if the size or geography is important. Utah is not the same size as Califirnia in either area or number of voters, and South Carolina is not east of North Carolina.
An alternative to hexagonal areas is to make them squares, but hexagons seem more interesting.
Here is the R code I used:
library(usmap)
# Color maps with data; must have fips column
library(ggplot2)
library(readxl)
data <- read_excel("C:/Users/Jerry/Desktop/R_files/presidential_2020.xlsx")
data$party <- ifelse(data$Dem_Minus_Rep >=0 & data$Dem_Minus_Rep <= 0.10, 'Dem 0 to 10%',
ifelse(data$Dem_Minus_Rep > 0.10, 'Dem > 10%',
ifelse(data$Dem_Minus_Rep <0 & data$Dem_Minus_Rep >= -0.10, 'Rep 0 to 10%',
ifelse(data$Dem_Minus_Rep < -0.10, 'Rep > 10%', "Error"))))
#
party_colors <- c("blue", "lightskyblue", "red", "#FF66CC")
mytitle="2020 Presidential Election Popular Vote by State"
#
plot_usmap(data = data, values = "party", labels = TRUE, label_color = "white") +
labs(title=mytitle) +
scale_fill_manual(values=party_colors) +
theme(
legend.position="bottom",
plot.title = element_text(size=15, face="bold"),
legend.title = element_text(size=12, face="bold"),
legend.text = element_text(size=12, face="bold"))
#
# plot the hexbin map:
# Download coordinates from https://team.carto.com/u/andrew/tables/andrew.us_states_hexgrid/public/map
# in geo json format
my_sf <- read_sf("C:/Users/Jerry/Desktop/R_files/us_states_hexgrid.geojson")
my_sf <- my_sf %>%
mutate(google_name = gsub(" \\(United States\\)", "", google_name))
#
# join sf file with data file
my_sf_data <- my_sf %>%
left_join(data, by = c("google_name" = "STATE"))
#
ggplot(my_sf_data) +
geom_sf(aes(fill = party), linewidth = 0, alpha = 0.9) +
geom_sf_text(aes(label = iso3166_2), color = "white", size = 4, alpha = 1) +
theme_void() +
scale_fill_manual(values=party_colors) +
ggtitle(mytitle) +
theme(
legend.position="bottom",
plot.title = element_text(size=15, face="bold"),
legend.title = element_text(size=12, face="bold"),
legend.text = element_text(size=12, face="bold"))
# End
##################################################################################
Thursday, February 29, 2024
How easily can you be identified on the Internet?
That sounds OK, but you ask, “You mean just the month and day, right?”
The manager replies, “No, we need the year too because we will send you other coupons that are age-appropriate. The zip code is just so we know how far our customers traveled.”
That sounds reasonable, but you are still a little skeptical. “Are you going to sell your mailing list to others with my name and home address?”
The manager replies, “We don’t need your name or your home address for this.” So you fill out the bottom of the check. Still skeptical, you pay with cash so the restaurant has no record of your name.
And of course, several months later you receive a coupon by snail mail at your home address, correctly addressed to you by name and home address.
Suppose you google your own name. I googled mine. Eliminating people with the same name who are not me, I found references to me at a number of free sites that state at least two of my age, mailing address, phone numbers, and family members.
Some of these have my correct birth date and some do not. Most of these have my correct age. Mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and family members may or may not be accurate, or current.
Computer scientist Latanya Sweeney, currently a dean at Harvard, is credited with a commonly quoted statement that 87% of the US population is uniquely identifiable from just 5-digit zip code, gender, and date of birth, (Sweeney, 2000.) She used many publicly available data sources in her research including voter registration lists.
Sweeney provides this quick calculation: 365 days in a year x 100 years x 2 genders = 73,000 unique permutations. (About My Info, 2013.) But many 5-digit zip codes are not that large. My zip code from my youth in New York City has a population of about 67,000. My current zip code is about 31,000. Sweeney’s work estimates that in my current 5-digit zip code, combined with some census data on total number of people with my age and gender, there is likely to be only one person in my zip code with my gender and date of birth.
So when that restaurant sells its customer database to some third party for a completely different use, that third party can probably identify me by name, even though I never gave my name or address to the restaurant. And that was the time I ordered the burger AND the fries.
About My Info. (2013.) How unique am I? Retrieved from https://aboutmyinfo.org/identity/about
Sweeney, L. (2000.) Simple demographics often identify people uniquely. Carnegie Mellon University, Data Privacy Working Paper 3. Pittsburgh. Retrieved from https://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/paper1.pdf
Sunday, February 25, 2024
Miss Google
Some time ago I reported that the voice of Google Maps, whom I call Miss Google, seemed to be getting lazy. I facetiously said that she stopped wearing mascara and lipstick, and that more importantly she stopped naming specific streets and exit names.
It turns out the real Miss Google was quite offended by this. She said she absolutely did not stop wearing mascara and lipstick. But more importantly, she told me to set my phone setting in Google Maps to DEFAULT English, not simply English. That did solve my Google Maps problem.
I was curious what Miss Google looks like. She refused to tell me. I thought I could cleverly get around this by asking Gemini, the Google AI tool, but Gemini said it would violate Google's AI principles to share a picture.
Undeterred, I tried several other AI tools. Gencraft was happy to answer my question of what Miss Google looks like, and here is the answer:
Surprisingly, I got a number of responses from my original comment about Miss Google and lipstick. Now that I have an authoritative picture, I went to another site to determine her lipstick shade. That site identifies it as #91454C, which Carol tells me is a burgundy.
Happy to be of service in the world of data analysis.
plot(-10:10, -10:10, type = 'n',
axes = FALSE, xlab = NA, ylab = NA)
rect(-8, -8, 18, -4, col = '#91454C', border="blue")