SUICIDE TRENDS VISUALISATION USING MICROSOFT POWERBI
The most awful kind of pain is when you are smiling just to stop the tears from falling.
Suicide is a huge decision, you don’t want to die, you just want to end the pain. Before, we dive into visualizing the suicide rates across the globe. We would talk briefly about why we need to visualize and the visualization tool that will be employed for this analysis.
Why Visualization?
Have you ever wondered why the entertainment industry tends to trend more than any other sector globally? We are in a fleet generation where people barely have time to sit down and read anything prolonged anymore when you have a message to convey. A generation where both young and old tends to be fascinated by pictures and videos much more than reading. People tend to stop and stare at compelling visuals easily, attention is more readily enticed to a picture rather than simple group of words.
However, if you are able to depict the essence of what you want to say with an image or photograph, there is a much better chance of capturing a larger percentage of the target audience. With the advancement of Technology and innovation increase on the rise, social media gets attention easily from every age group without much persuasion. The human brain can process images 60,000 times faster than it can process words. In an instant, an image can convey an idea or an emotion which will stick with you much longer than the words on a page.
Thus, visualization is one of the key skills required of a data scientist/ data analyst. The ability to generate pictorial insights from raw datasets and effectively communicate the results to the target audience, stakeholders, technical and non-technical personnel is highly crucial.
This article would be exploring interactive visualization to draw insights and trends of suicide rates over a number of years.
What is Suicide?
Suicide, from the Latin word suicidium, is “the act of taking one’s life”. It is sometimes a way for people to escape pain or suffering. Every suicide is a tragedy that affects families, communities and entire countries and has long-lasting effects on the people.
Why do people commit suicide?
There are numerous reasons why people commit suicide globally ranging from
· Mental illness
· Severe Depression
· Bipolar disorder
· Borderline personality disorder (BPD)
· Social isolation
· Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
· Substance Use and Impulsivity
· Loss or fear of loss
· Hopelessness
· Chronic Pain and illness etc.
This article will examine the various suicide rates across countries based on different indicators using power bi as a visualization tool.
What is Data Visualization?
Data visualization can simply be referred to as the graphical representation of information and data via visual aid such as charts, graphs, timelines, maps etc.
Types of Data Visualization
It is crucial to understand the peculiarity between these two categories as they serve different purposes, hence require marginally different devices and techniques
· Explanation Visualization is suitable for story-telling when we already know what the data has to say. It is beneficial for presentation to an audience such as team members, managers and general public etc. This include selecting resolute data that will support the story we are trying to tell and eliminating any distraction or irrelevant details while Exploration visualization can be used to discover the story behind our datasets. It is advantageous when we are considering an unusual dataset. Exploratory visualization helps us to get insight of what’s going on within our dataset, we can quickly distinguish data features, correlations, regressions, patterns, or/and outliers. The visualization in this article is exploratory in nature.
Data Visualization Tools
A visualization tool is a software package that take data from various sources and presents it in visual charts, graphs, tables, dashboards etc. These instruments can create anything ranging from simple pie graphs to complicated interactive choropleth maps. The learning curve for each tool varies. There are various kinds of data visualization tools worldwide which include: Plotly, ggplot, google analytics, Tableau, Matplotlib, Power Bi etc. For this dataset, Power bi will be employed as a tool for visualization.
Brief History of Power Bi
Power Bi was originally designed by Ron George in the summer of 2010 and named Project Crescent. Project Crescent was initially available for public download on July 11, 2011 bundled with SQL Server Codename Denali. Later renamed to Power BI it was then unveiled by Microsoft in September 2013 as Power BI for Office.
Power BI provides cloud-based BI (business intelligence) services, known as “Power BI Services”, along with a desktop-based interface, called “Power BI Desktop”. Power BI versions are numerous ranging from Power bi desktop, Power bi services, Power bi pro, Power bi premium, Power bi mobile, Power bi embedded, Power bi report server. You can also check this link to read more here
The power bi product is made up of a number of components such as Power Query, Power Pivot, Power View, Power Map, Power Q&A.
Overview of the Datasets
The datasets used for this visualization is a compiled dataset pulled from four other datasets linked by time and location. The data is built to find pointers correlated to increased suicide rates among allies globally across the socio-economic spectrum.
Insights Generated from The Dataset Used
Firstly, the dataset was imported and transformed for cleaning and necessary re-arrangement in readiness for visualization before loading. This is done using the power query. Here, we can check the data types, remove unnecessary columns, create new columns, split etc.
Lots of insights was generated the datasets below is a summary of my discoveries.
Power BI gives us the ability to present our visuals on a single report page. we can also use slicers to drill down for more granular details on our data.
The pictorial chart below depicts the gender that is more likely to commit suicide
This shows that male gender is more likely to commit suicide that female gender. Reasons ranging from peer pressure, fear of failure, rejection or inability to express emotions and how they feel. With further analysis there can be clarity as to why the male gender commits suicide more than the female gender.
It was discovered that Russian Federation has the highest number of suicide rates closely followed by United States and Japan. Though, the age group (35–54) has the highest number of people committing suicides across the countries. But the age range still varied across each countries.
Which generation committed suicide the most by percentage?
The visual above shows that the silent generation had the highest suicide rate per 100k population. We seem to have witnessed a decreased suicide rate down to generations 2.
Below is a Line chart showing the age range that has the highest tendency to commit suicide
From the line chart, we would see more middle-aged (35–54) people have committed suicide over time. This could be as a result this age group experiencing lots of life challenges, family pressure and expenses.
Does country’s GDP (Gross domestic product) have any correlations with the rate of suicide?
Using a stacked column chart, we visualize the relationship that exist between GDP and number of suicides per country. Countries with low GDP such as Greece and Malta tend to have a lower rate of suicides. However, there are still exceptions, as we can see that some other countries with very high GDP still have low suicide rates. The variations differ for each country for diverse reason which can be discovered upon further investigation.
There are numerous insights and questions that can be derived from this dataset but with further investigation and research objectives.
In Conclusion, we need to be more sensitive to the needs, emotions and psychology of our male gender and also try to equally support them at all times. They tend to go through a lot but keep mute. Also, Russian Federation really need to look into why the suicide rate in the country tends to be higher than other countries. The mental health awareness of these regions should be improved upon.
I would appreciate your claps, criticism and feedback in the comments.
