- Track the individual pills through the years
- Plot ALL the pills on a scatter plot
Visualizing laboratory pill testing data from EcstasyData.org, an independent laboratory testing program run by the Erowid Center.
Collaborators: Ryan Quan (rcquan), Frank Chen (frankchen07)
- Ratio of MDMA in pills sold as ecstasy with respect to time
- Breakdown of chemical substances in pills sold as ecstasy with respect to time
- Ratio of MDMA in pills by city and/or state (possibly animated)
- Seasonal trends
- Following a tablet through time
- Distribution of color and branding of ecstasy pills
- Read the XML data from the following URL into R
- Parse values in "actives" tag to target format using
meltfromreshape2 - String manipulation to get
substance_nameandratiointo separate columns - Use
dplyrto calculate ratio of MDMA and bin into the following groups:- == 1 Only MDMA
-
= .5 More MDMA than Shit
- < .5 Less MDMA than Shit
- == 0 No MDMA
- Do a one-to-many merge to obtain complete and tidy data set
MDMA, or 'ecstasy' is a 'psychedelic amphetamine' that has gained popularity over the past 20 years because of its ability to produce strong feelings of comfort, empathy, and connection to others. It most frequently comes in tablet form, although it is also found in capsules or as powder.
Because MDMA is so popular and because it goes well with dance parties, the demand for it usually exceeds supply--especially at any given location on any given night. This creates an opening for unscrupulous individuals to sell virtually anything as 'ecstasy'. While 'ecstasy' is the popular name for MDMA, the functional definition of ecstasy is any pill represented as MDMA on the street. Ecstasy pills are notoriously unreliable in content, more so than most other street drugs and don't necessarily contain MDMA or any psychoactive.
We will be exploring and visualizing pill test data from 1999-2014 to uncover geo-spatial and time-series trends relating to the sale and chemical makeup of ecstasy tablets sold on the streets.
Our goal for this data visualization project is to help reduce harm and misinformation associated with ecstasy. By creating an engaging product, we hope to encourage prospective and current users of the drug to conduct more thorough research before, if ever, they decide to use.
With permission from the owners, we will be scraping laboratory pill test data directly from the website of EcstasyData.org, an independent laboratory pill testing program run by the Erowid Center.