JHU Data Science Capstone Final Report by Phil Ferriere April 2016

Phil Ferriere's Data Science Coursera Capstone Project

Developing Data Products Course Project

As part of the Coursera course on Reproducible Research in Data Science, we use the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) storm database to answer the two following questions: Across the United States, which types of events (as indicated in the EVTYPE variable) are most harmful with respect to population health? Across the United States, which types of events have the greatest economic consequences? As is shown in this document, the top 3 types of events most harmful with respect to population health are tornados, excessive heat, and thunderstorms. We also find that the top 3 types of events that have the greatest economic consequences are floods, hurricanes/typhoons, and tornados.