Environmental Conservation (Science) G315

Problem Set

Due March 30 and it is worth 5% of your course grade.

The purpose of this exercise is to explore data on waterborne disease outbreaks, community, non-community, individual and total cases. Another goal is to use spread sheets to organize and examine waterborne disease outbreaks information, including making simple graphs. The data you need to answer questions should be in Tables 13 in the Gleick text book (2002-2003) [http://www.worldwater.org//table13.htm]

  1. Waterborne disease outbreaks were in the news in the USA during the 20th century.
    1. Using data from Table 13, make a spreadsheet including year (column 1), community (column 2), non-community (column 3), individual (column 4), Total outbreaks (column 5), and Total Cases (column 6).
    2. Calculate cases per outbreak (column 7). Make time-series plots of the data in columns 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 vs year. Either separate or combined plots vs year can be generated, whichever you find more convenient.
    3. Describe in words the time trends observed in the USA for community (column 2), total cases (column 5), and cases per outbreak (column 7).
    4. How do you think that relative proportions of major categories of outbreaks (non-community, individual, total cases) may have changed in the USA during the time period shown in the data?
    5. How would you explain the time trends for cases per outbreak during the last three decades of the 20th century?
    6. What happened in 1993? ... you may need to do some search on this question.