Which is the smartest county in Ireland? #Analytics #HDSDA #101

If the percentage of people in an area who hold a Ph.D. is a measure of how smart a county is, then look no further than the 2011 Census Small Area Population Statistics (SAPS) for details. I downloaded the figures for the overall population of each county, and the numbers of men and women in each county who hold a Ph.D. Of course counties with larger populations will have more Ph.Ds. (Co Dublin had a population of 910,012 of whom 6,573 had a Ph.D. in 2011). So I converted the figures to a percentage in order to make comparisons between the counties. 

The bar chart below (written in R) displays the percentage of the population of each of the 26 counties who have a Ph.D.

While the numbers are small, 0.72% of the population of Dublin (where there are three Universities) has a Ph.D., it is interesting to compare the regions and counties. You can see that the University cities (Dublin, Galway, Cork, and Limerick), plus their surrounding counties (e.g. Wicklow, Kildare, Clare), have much higher levels than midland counties where there is no university. It is also reasonable to assume that where there are Universities, there will be more people with Ph.D. living there because that's where many of them work. I'll do a comparison of males and females for tomorrow.

If you would like to plot this chart for yourself, the R code at the end of this post should work. You'll need to create a CSV file to store the data (I called mine "PhDbyCounty.csv" in the code below) - here's a table of the data I used that you should copy and save into the CSV file:

County	Males PhD	Female PhD	Total PhD	Pop Males	Pop Females	Total Pop (over 19+)	Percentage Males	Percentage Females	Percentage Total
Dublin	4,174	2,399	6,573	440,432	469,580	910,012	0.95	0.51	0.72
Galway	710	416	1,126	86,221	86,569	172,790	0.82	0.48	0.65
Cork	1,333	722	2,055	177,896	180,378	358,274	0.75	0.4	0.57
Carlow	48	42	200	18,730	18,210	36,940	0.26	0.23	0.54
Wicklow	284	155	439	45,376	46,665	92,041	0.63	0.33	0.48
Kildare	397	219	616	67,046	66,361	133,407	0.59	0.33	0.46
Limerick	372	194	566	68,797	68,663	137,460	0.54	0.28	0.41
Clare	183	109	292	40,819	40,170	80,989	0.45	0.27	0.36
Meath	245	145	390	58,561	57,609	116,170	0.42	0.25	0.34
Sligo	79	64	143	22,330	23,055	45,385	0.35	0.28	0.32
Waterford	150	76	226	39,397	40,103	79,500	0.38	0.19	0.28
Westmeath	94	62	156	28,521	28,648	57,169	0.33	0.22	0.27
Kerry	183	69	252	52,962	52,206	105,168	0.35	0.13	0.24
Leitrim	29	18	47	11,052	10,442	21,494	0.26	0.17	0.22
Tipperary	149	93	242	55,296	54,064	109,360	0.27	0.17	0.22
Mayo	117	75	192	46,001	45,096	91,097	0.25	0.17	0.21
Cavan	37	19	90	23,752	22,343	46,095	0.16	0.09	0.2
Louth	106	58	164	39,721	40,841	80,562	0.27	0.14	0.2
Donegal	133	67	200	52,113	52,725	104,838	0.26	0.13	0.19
Longford	30	17	47	12,734	12,263	24,997	0.24	0.14	0.19
Wexford	111	72	183	47,473	47,761	95,234	0.23	0.15	0.19
Roscommon	47	33	80	22,385	21,158	43,543	0.21	0.16	0.18
Kilkenny	57	43	100	31,915	31,453	63,368	0.18	0.14	0.16
Offaly	39	39	78	25,581	25,113	50,694	0.15	0.16	0.15
Laoighis	37	24	61	24,773	23,428	48,201	0.15	0.1	0.13
Monaghan	17	21	38	20,717	19,983	40,700	0.08	0.11	0.09

# R code to plot bar chart
#

# read in and display PhD data from CSV file
PhDdata <- hdbycounty.csv="" header="T)</font" read.csv="" sep=",">
#

# Check input is read correctly: display some data from CSV file

names (PhDdata)

PhDdata$County

PhDdata$Percentage.Total

#

# Plot bar chart

barplot(PhDdata$Percentage.Total, horiz = TRUE, 

        names.arg = PhDdata$County, xlab = "Percent Population with a PhD",

        main = "Proportion of PhD by County in Republic of Ireland",

       col = "red", space=0.5, axisnames=TRUE, cex.names = 0.75, las=1)

# end of code