Friday, July 23, 2021

Public School Demographics by State - Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) by David White

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Exploratory Data Analysis

Public school data by state (part 1 of 2)

David White | Friday, July 23, 2021

What is Exploratory Data Analysis?

Exploratory data analysis (EDA) is a technique used by data scientists to inspect, characterize and briefly summarize the contents of a dataset. EDA is often the first step when encountering a new or unfamiliar dataset. EDA helps the data scientist become acquainted with a dataset and test some basic assumptions about the data. By the end of the EDA process, some initial insights can be drawn from the dataset and a framework for further analysis or modeling is established.

This exploratory data analysis explores a dataset of information on public schools in the United States. The underlying data was released by the U.S. Department of Education.

See also: Exploratory Data Analysis: Public School Staffing

Here are the takeaways from the dataset:

• The dataset consists of 51 rows and 42 columns

• The dataset consists of:

  • student enrollment

  • school staffing

  • student demographic information

• There are 51 rows and 42 columns in the dataset. None of the rows are blank.

• The dataset contains totals per state of the number of students in (2) gender categories and (7) race/ethnicity categories.

• 2018-19 US public school total enrollments by demographic group are as follows:

  • 25.8 million male students

  • 24.4 million female students

  • 473K American Indian/Alaska Native students

  • 2.6 million Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander students

  • 13.7 million Hispanic students

  • 7.6 million Black students

  • 23.7 million White students

  • 176K Hawaiian Nat./Pacific Isl. students

  • 2 million multiracial students

• The states with the highest number of Black public school students are: Florida, Georgia and Texas

• The states with the highest number of Hispanic public school students are: California and Texas

• The state with the highest number of Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander public school students is California. New York and Texas are a distant second and third.

• The states with the highest number of American Indian/Alaska Native public school students by far is Oklahoma

• The state with the highest number of Hawaiian/Pacific Islander public school students by far is Hawaii

• The states with the highest number of White public school students are: California and Texas

Key Insight:

Populations of White students and populations of White students are mostly in portion with the state's overall population. However, for other demographic groups, students of that ethnicity are more heavily concentrated in just a handful of states.