Você está na página 1de 4

Computer Science and Engineering

3.2 Data Proposal Project


May 18, 2016
Ethan Reed, Nicolas Knauer, Steven Aprill

How Internet Affects a Country


As the Internet's influence on modern society continues to grow, along comes changes
that one may not expect. Our team wanted to make a dent in the way the world looks at the
impact of the internet by answering the questions, Why does internet usage matter and how do
countries with high Internet usage compare to countries with low internet usage? What are the
factors that make up this comparison? In order to complete this task, we had to gather a set of
data that would include internet usage as well as other statistics based on what we thought would
be meaningful. We chose countries from around the world that have a relatively similar internet
usage, using all the countries that range from 50 percent of the population who use the internet
up to 100 percent.. In order to properly analyze and compare the countries, we needed general
information about the given country. The data we used was taken from The World Bank. The set
of data included 300,000 units, ranging from Electric Power Consumption to Infant Mortality
rates; in the data, Internet usage was also included. Our team sifted through the variables and
eventually decided on four variables that we thought would have a meaningful and interesting
impact on Internet usage based on the country.
With the specific units of data picked and organized, our team began looking at the
different options for visually representing the numbers. We organized the data into our five
different categories (Electric Power Consumption, Urban Population, Infant Mortality Rate, and
Self Employment) and put the numbers in a completely different excel sheet, with that we were
able to make simple bar graphs. The data was then organized and plotted; we started representing

only a few countries at a time. The bar graph displayed a correlation, however it was not strong
enough to draw conclusions; because of this issue, we ramped up the countries up to 66 on one
chart, which provided a large enough pool of data to draw conclusions without being too much
data to visually analyze. Due to this change we ran into other problems, our data now had
outliers and it would be harder to represent on one chart.
The first variable we decided to look at was percent Urban Population compared to
percent Population of Internet Users (figure 1). To our surprise, Urban Population did not affect
Internet Usage. When looking at the figure 1, as internet usage drops (blue) there is no
correlation to the percent Urban Population (red). This was surprising to us because we figured
that the more urbanized areas would have better access to the Internet, therefore increasing
usage. But the percentage of people who lived in an urban environment was too inconsistent to
make any correlations to. There are many reasons that urban population is so inconsistent in
countries. Increases in urban population from year to year are exponential, as cities start to grow
there are countless amounts of people settling down inside of them and they often are not able to
expand fast enough to accommodate for them all. This leads to poor living conditions and slums
as seen in countries such as Egypt or India, and obviously lots of citizens without internet
access. After this unexpected outcome we decided to start looking at more abstract variables.
There seems to be a direct correlation to Internet Usage and Infancy Death Rates. When
looking at the bar graph for Infancy Death Rate compared to Internet Usage (figure 2) we found
that this was our most direct comparison. As Internet Usage (blue) dropped, Infancy Death Rates
(red) generally rose. This could be due to many different reasons, one of our speculations is if
internet usage is low the country might not have enough information to prevent children from
dying due to rare diseases and afflictions. Using the internet is a great way to communicate and

the ability for doctors to share treatment methods is the difference between life or death for many
people, especially those with fragile bodies such as infants.
Our third variable comparison was between Internet user base and Electric Power
consumption. Although the correlation between electric power usage and internet user base is an
obvious one we decided to look further into it to see if the correlation was linear or exponential.
Our base model for internet users figure 3 is organized based off of the highest percentage,
looking at our Electric Power Usage model (figure 4) it is also on a general downward slope with
few outliers. From this we can conclude that as internet usage increases, electric power
consumption exponentially increases. As technology advances enough to the point of ninety
percent of a country using the internet, electric power consumption begins to increase very
quickly. The effects of this are most apparent when comparing to the environment and how the
pollution of the country was before and after the usage of internet started going up.
Our fourth and final comparison is between, again, Internet Usage based on population
and Self Employment. We chose to look at these variables because if one were to think about
how internet usage relates to self-employment they could assume that a higher internet usage
would mean a higher self employment rate, with more people staying at home to work from there
computers. This is not, infact, the case. Looking at figure 3 and comparing it to that of figure 5
you can see the upward slope. Lower Internet usage means higher self employment. We
wondered why that might be before we realized we were looking at the data wrong. In America
when thinking about self employment people tend to think about entrepreneurs who are starting
their own business. Nearly every single one of those people advertise and grow through use of
the internet, which is why the first assumption was made. Self employment does not have that
same image everywhere else. In less civilized countries most self employed people cannot find a

job, and make less than two dollars a day on their own. This would make countries with lower
internet usage have many more self employed people who are not as successful.
We used these statistics to try and form meaningful comparisons which we could use to
make assumptions about how both internet usage affects and country, and how other statistics
affect internet usage. Overall internet usage has a high impact on society and economy, and we
can conclude what actually impacts the internet usage of a country. When countries with high
populations and low standards of living develop, it is difficult for everyone to establish access to
useful resources such as the internet. When big businesses begin to arise in a country and the
economy stabilizes to a point where unemployment is no longer a prominent issue the internet
usage begins to rise. There are many factors that go into internet usage that we did not take a
look at which would be needed to make more precise conclusions, but from our data we can
conclude that the increase in internet means a better overall quality of life for a countrys
citizens.

Você também pode gostar