Assignment 3

For Assignment 3, our task was to explore the various types of visualization tools that are available.

Being a Mac user, it made it difficult to download one of the recommended programs - Tableau.

Nonetheless, there are many other programs out there that are able to help us with the data visualization, and there are many tools that are available to help us. I've decided to look at browser based tools, as one can access them from anywhere, and would not need to have the hassle of downloading a different program whenever I changed computers. The three tools that I used include: Many Eyes, Plotly, and Jolicharts.

Of all the three tools that I used, I believed that Plotly was the most useful of them all. It was easy to manipulate data, change graphics, save and download the visualizations that it produced. In addition, it allowed for statistical calculations

I've decided to look at the largest fast food chain in the world - McDonald's to get a closer insight into what is contained within the food that they produce.

The aim of the study was to see if McDonald's top selling and most popular foods contained sufficient good nutrients, and reduced the bad nutrients as recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

I narrowed down the items that I wanted to look at, from over 80 plus menu items to 16.

The following are the items that I selected, based on the most popular menu items that customers purchase. The items in green are McDonald's signature items. They are also very popular among customers.

McDONALD'S Bacon Ranch Salad with Crispy Chicken

McDONALD'S, Apple Dippers

McDONALD'S, Bacon Ranch Salad with Grilled Chicken

McDONALD'S, Bacon Ranch Salad without chicken

McDONALD'S, Baked Apple Pie

McDONALD'S, Caesar Salad with Crispy Chicken

McDONALD'S, Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken

McDONALD'S, Caesar Salad without chicken

McDONALD'S, Chicken McNUGGETS

McDONALD'S, Double Cheeseburger

McDONALD'S, French Fries

McDONALD'S, Sausage Burrito

McDONALD'S, Sausage McGRIDDLES

McDONALD'S, BIG MAC

McDONALD'S, DOUBLE QUARTER POUNDER with Cheese

McDONALD'S, Egg McMUFFIN

I looked at 8 nutrients that the U.S. FDA recommended consumers to increase and reduce. The following are the 5 nutrients that one is supposed to increase:

1. Dietary Fiber

2. Vitamin A

3. Vitamin C

4. Calcium

5. Iron

The following 3 nutrients are recommended by the U.S. FDA to reduce. They include:

1. Cholesterol

2. Fat

3. Sodium

Of course, one would expect that one eats a full meal each time that one goes to McDonald's. However, for the purpose of this exercise, I only used each individual menu item. Eg: one burger, and not one set meal.

Based on the FDA recommendations, I crafted out the optimal nutrients that one should take. They include:

Nutrients that should be limited (Per meal)	Nutrients that should be taken more (Per meal)
Fat: 21,666mg Sodium: 800mg Cholesterol: 100mg	Dietary Fiber: 8,333mg Vitamin A: 1,666 IU Vitamin C: 20mg Calcium: 333mg Iron: 6mg

This is based on one meal that one should consume.

This was labeled 'Optimal Meal' and was at the top of the list of the other McDonald's menu items.

To prevent repetition of the report, I've summarized the three tools into a table, where we are able to see the various features of the tool itself:

Item	Many Eyes	Plotly	Jolicharts
Loading speed	Slow	Fast	Slow
Interactive Visualizations	Yes	Yes	Yes
Download/Save	No	Yes	Yes
Sharing function	No	Yes	Yes
Data Privacy	Public	Private	Private
Ability to edit data	No	Yes	No
Data Analysis	No	Yes	No
Customizability	No	Yes	Yes
Requires account	Yes	No, but need account to share or save	Yes
Browser-based	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ability to zoom in	No	Yes	No
Slideshow	No	No	Yes
Support	None	None	Live Chat
Notes	No	Yes	No
Ability to Undo	No	Yes	No
API Support	No	Yes	No
Cost	Free	Free	Free

Despite using all these three charts, I felt that they still could not provide a simple visualization that I wanted. This would optimally show all the nutrients, and tell the user on first glance what is lacking. In fact, a table with coloured cells seem to be able to show the answer better that all the visualizations so far:

Food Item	Total Lipid	Sodium	Cholesterol	Dietary Fibre	Vitamin A	Vitamin C	Calcium	Iron
Optimal Meal	21,666	800	100	8,333	1,666	20	333	6
McDONALD'S Bacon Ranch Salad with Crispy Chicken	20100	871	70	3200	7927	30.9	147	1.95
McDONALD'S, Apple Dippers	0	0	0	0	5	188.4	42	0.07
McDONALD'S, Bacon Ranch Salad with Grilled Chicken	9580	702	85	3000	6137	31.1	146	1.98
McDONALD'S, Bacon Ranch Salad without chicken	8120	294	27	3300	6447	30.1	140	1.49
McDONALD'S, Baked Apple Pie	12060	153	0	1500	0	24.9	15	1.53
McDONALD'S, Caesar Salad with Crispy Chicken	16410	742	56	3400	7917	30.9	188	1.76
McDONALD'S, Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken	5620	580	71	3300	6139	31.4	189	1.81
McDONALD'S, Caesar Salad without chicken	4370	177	11	3400	6441	30	183	1.3
McDONALD'S, Chicken McNUGGETS	12680	362	28	0	0	0.8	7	0.57
McDONALD'S, Double Cheeseburger	24940	1035	74	1200	0	0.6	276	3.47
McDONALD'S, French Fries	10980	134	0	2800	0	4	13	0.57
McDONALD'S, Sausage Burrito	17120	763	173	1200	382	0.9	203	1.84
McDONALD'S, Sausage McGRIDDLES	23980	995	32	1400	0	0	85	1.92
McDONALD'S, BIG MAC	32760	1007	79	3500	412	0.9	254	4.38
McDONALD'S, DOUBLE QUARTER POUNDER with Cheese	45420	1333	160	2800	560	1.7	297	6.1
McDONALD'S, Egg McMUFFIN	12170	777	208	1400	0	1.5	242	2.9

Apologies for the small print, and the horribly out of size chart, I was unable to fit the table into the blog post properly.

Nonetheless, on one glance, one can tell if there are sufficient nutrients in a certain item. Based on these 16 items, none of them are able to contain sufficient 'good' nutrients, but most of them are able to reduce the bad nutrients.

Some interesting facts:

1. The Big Mac contains more dietary fibre than all of the food items, even more than the salads, however still insufficient for a meal.

2. Apple Dippers had 0 'bad' nutrients, but did not have much 'good' nutrients (possibly due to the small serving size of the Apple Dippers).

3. Based on a 'good' to 'bad' nutrient ratio, the Chicken McNuggets has the highest disparity, with absolutely no dietary fibre, little iron, calcium, and vitamin A, and no Vitamin C at all.

4. There are absolutely no cholesterol in French Fries, Apple Dippers, and the Apple Pie.
- there are good and bad cholesterol, and having absolutely no cholesterol at all could potentially be unhealthy for one.

That being said, the three tools are all not without flaws, most of them are small and minor, and one will find the tools to be extremely useful in creating data visualizations. Not really infographics (as discussed in the earlier blog post). Perhaps tools such as piktochart would be better at creating infographics.

Nonetheless, the assignment did give me a better understanding into the various browser based software that I was able to employ for the purpose of this project. It gave me a better understanding into the tools out there.

Perhaps it is time to learn some basic programming to be able to create data visualizations/infographics that is both interactive and completely customizable.