Assignment on COVID-19 Vaccinations and Cases in Local Authority Districts (LADs) in England

Part 1

Write a document – e.g., plain text, Microsoft Word or using RMarkdown – presenting the answers to the questions listed below. You should present the answers in the same order as they are listed, each in a separate section of the document, including the code, the output and the textual component as required. The four
parts of the assignment will contribute to the overall mark as follows:

• Part 1:
Weight: 10% (Part 1.1 5%, Part 1.2 5%);
Marking criteria: correctness of the code, clarity of the code, efficiency of the code, quality of the coding style, quality of the commenting.

• Part 2:
Weight: 30% (Part 2.1 10%, Part 2.2 10%, Part 2.3 10%);
Marking criteria: correctness of the code, clarity of the code, efficiency of the code, quality of the coding style, quality of the commenting.

• Part 3:
Weight: 40%;
Marking criteria: complexity of the analysis, quality of the analytical treatment of the data, correctness of the code, clarity of the code, efficiency of the code, quality of the coding style, quality of the commenting.

• Part 4:
Weight: 20%;
Marking criteria: level of reproducibility of the submitted document, quality of the document presentation, evidence of knowledge of reproducibility principles and practices, critical assessment of the approach.

Submit your document through BlackBoard, using the form linked in the Assessment and Feedback section. When writing up, remember that the submission should be anonymous. Do not include your name in the document and use your Student ID as author instead.

Part 1.1
The file covid19_vaccinations_2020-12-06_2021-10-02_long.csv contains a table detailing the number of new and cumulative covid-19 cases, as well as the number of people who were vaccinated with their first and second dose, in the UK between December 6th, 2020 and October 2nd, 2021, according to the official
Government statistics. The data are presented in a long format. Each row represents a single measure (new cases, cumulative cases, first dose or second dose vaccinations) for a specific day and Local Authority District (LAD) in England. The record is missing where the measure (new cases, cumulative cases, first dose
or second dose vaccinations) was zero (e.g., no new cases).

Write the code necessary to load the data from the file above into a variable:
• containing only the data for the three LADs assigned to you in the table in the appendix;
• as a wide-format table, including a record for each one of the three LADs and day in the period from December 6th, 2020 to October 2nd, 2021;
• and including a 0 value where the record is missing.

Part 2

Part 1.2
The file ukpopestimatesmid2020on2021geography.csv contains a table detailing the population per Local Authority District in the UK, according to the mid-year population estimates (Mid-2020 edition) from the Office for National Statistics.
Write the code necessary to:
• load the population data into a variable;
• and join this new information with the information about cases and vaccinations in the areas assigned to you.

Part 2
Part 2.1
Write the code necessary to create a table showing, for each LAD assigned to you:
• the number of new cases in the day that metric was the highest in that LAD;
• as well as the new cases as a percentage of the local population;
• ordered by date.

Part 2.2
Write the code necessary to create a table showing:
• for each day in July 2021;
• the change in new cases as a percentage compared to the number of new cases 7 days earlier;
• presenting each LAD in a separate column.

For instance, the table below shows the first eight days in July as an example. The number of cases in Leicester on July 1st was 124 and the number of cases on July 8th was 139. Thus, the change in new cases for July 8th was 12.1%.

Part 2.3
Write the code necessary to create separately, for each one of the LADs assigned to you, a table showing:
• the average daily new first dose vaccination per week;
• in the month with the highest number of first vaccination in a day.

Part 3
Propose, execute and discuss the results (maximum 300 words in total, excluding code and comments) of an analysis of the provided data, similar to the one executed in Part 2, but comparing the LAD 1 assigned to you in the appendix to the overall national trends in England. The textual component of this part of the assignment can be written as one block of text, an introduction followed by the analysis and then a discussion, a description of each step of the analysis and results, or a combination of any of the above.

Part 4
Write a brief discussion (maximum 200 words, excluding references) of the approach taken to create the submitted document and its level of reproducibility.
Note: if you create a repository for this project, you must create an anonymous-looking username (e.g., signing up with your university email if you are already otherwise registered on GitHub or GitLab) to create a repository. The repository MUST BE PRIVATE. Add the module convener as a collaborator –sdesabbata on GitHub, please check with the module convener if you use another platform. Include the full, plain URL (e.g., https://github.com/sdesabbata/r-for-geographic-data-science) in your submission, as links tend not to work properly on TurnItIn.

Note: include a paragraph such as the one below to comply with the Open Government licence and the other data licences, both in your final document and in the repository’s README.md file (if you create one).