This section examines how broader community factors—specifically drug use and crime—may intersect with educational achievement and postsecondary participation. The parallel coordinates plot and accompanying box plot suggest a modest but noticeable correlation between higher levels of drug use and lower standardized test scores, as well as reduced representation of young adults continuing into higher education. While these relationships are not absolute, the visual patterns indicate that increased exposure to substance use can coincide with less favorable academic outcomes. In a similar vein, the parallel coordinates comparing crime rates with test performance, alongside choropleth maps of crime and education, help reveal a potential spatial relationship: areas experiencing higher crime often show signs of less effective educational outcomes.
Above are a parallel coordinates and box plot giving us slight revelations of the drug and academic connection. In our parallel coordinates we can clearly see that the higher percentage of illicit drug use correlates to lower average test scores. And with the box plot it is clear that marijuana legality correlates to lower participation in higher education.
The data above looks at violent crime statistics in certain states and compares it to average state test scores in reading, writing, math, and science (as a cumulative average). We wanted to see if states with higher violent crime percentages would also correlate to lower test scores. We hypothesized that it would, given the idea of higher amounts of violent crimes being equal to lower income and therefore less school funding.
And below two interesting choropleths reveal a potential relationship between states with higher violent crime rates and states with more students attending higher edcuation.
From our brief look into the effect of drugs and crime on average test scores we can start to see the negative effects that violent crime and drug usage take on test scores and participation in higher education.