{"id":159524,"date":"2020-04-01T07:15:37","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T11:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=159524"},"modified":"2020-03-31T16:47:28","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T20:47:28","slug":"uconn-student-tracks-pandemic-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/04\/uconn-student-tracks-pandemic-data\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Student Tracks Pandemic With Data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Early in the spring semester, when it was still possible for people in the U.S. to wonder whether the coronavirus outbreak would come here with the same force it had in China, Yuansun (Sonny) Jiang already knew how fast events could change.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\">\u201c<\/span><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\">Having family in China, the impacts of this disease really had a personal impact even before the effects were felt here in the U.S.,\u201d says Jiang, a Master\u2019s student pursuing a degree in Quantitative Economics.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Jiang knew he didn\u2019t want to sit idly by as the disease began to spread. Using the skills he was learning in Prof. Oskar Harmon\u2019s <\/span><\/span><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Writing and Communication for Economics and Business graduate course, Jiang began assembling <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/sonnyits.com\/projects\/2020\/03\/14\/COVID19CTData.html\">the COVID-19 Connecticut Data Visualization website<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">, where he daily charts the pandemic\u2019s course both here in Connecticut and across the country.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\">\u201c<\/span><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\">Being able to gauge how the disease is spreading without the hype from social media and sensational articles was really important to me,\u201d Jiang says.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Using data from the state, Jiang tracks not only the latest number of confirmed coronavirus diagnoses by county, but charts how they\u2019ve grown since March 12. The stark upward trajectory of cases in Fairfield County, which as of March 31 had 1,445 confirmed diagnoses, is particularly sobering.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\">The clarity and ease of use of Jiang\u2019s site are \u201c<\/span><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\">all the more impressive given that he is a graduate student just learning skills in data visualization,\u201d Harmon wrote in an email.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Jiang also tracks the course of the pandemic across the United States, using data from Johns Hopkins University. Ultimately, he says, understanding where the disease is spreading, and how fast it\u2019s spreading, will provide valuable insight for policymakers and the public.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\">\u201c<\/span><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\">I hope it will help people\u00a0get an accurate sense of how this disease is spreading in our community and also throughout the world,\u201d Jiang says. \u201cWith this data and analysis of public policy in different countries, we can see which governments are taking effective action, and try to gauge just how effective they are relative to other countries.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The COVID-19 Connecticut Data Visualization website <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/sonnyits.com\/projects\/2020\/03\/14\/COVID19CTData.html\">can be visited here<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">. For more information on the Master of Science in Quantitative Economics program, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/msqe.econ.uconn.edu\/\">visit its website<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An MS student at UConn has created a website to track the spread of coronavirus in Connecticut. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":159540,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,1715,2213,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-159524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-community-impact","category-coronavirus","category-uconn-storrs","post_format-post-format-video"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 05:40:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159524"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159542,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159524\/revisions\/159542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/159540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159524"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=159524"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=159524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}