This repository showcases a data visualization project designed to represent the complete oral health status of the Tsimane population of Bolivia. The heatmap synthesizes over 32,000 data points from 1,176 individuals into a single, intuitive image, revealing complex patterns of dental health across age, sex, and anatomy.
The full project, including the visualization and detailed analysis, is best viewed on the live project page:
https://mschwar.github.io/data-visualization/
The heatmap displays the dental health of 1,176 individuals (543 men and 633 women) from the Tsimane Health and Life History Project. Its purpose is to make a complex, multidimensional dataset immediately understandable by visualizing patterns of tooth decay and loss across:
- 28 permanent teeth (incisors, canines, premolars, and molars)
- Age groups (ranging from 15-24 to 75+)
- Sex (male and female)
- Anatomy (upper and lower teeth)
A 5-point color scale indicates the health status of each tooth, from healthy (blue) to missing (red).
index.md: The main content file for the GitHub Pages site, written in Markdown.oral-health-heatmap.png: The high-resolution image of the data visualization._config.yml: The configuration file that applies the visual theme to the GitHub Pages site.
This visualization was created as part of the research published in:
Trumble, B., Schwartz, M., et al. (2024). Poor Oral Health Is Associated With Inflammation, Aortic Valve Calcification, and Brain Volume Among Forager-Farmers. The Journals of Gerontology. DOI: 10.1093/gerona/glae013
Created by Matthew Schwartz.