Veterans in Georgia - full text

​Veterans in the USA, in GA, and within GA in 2005-2009

​Executive Summary
The USA had more than 22 million veterans in 2005-2009, which is 10.12% of the adult civilian population. Half of the states have between 9.95% and 12.03% veterans in their states. Two states are very different than the other states: Alaska has a much higher amount of veterans (15%) while New York has a much lower amount of veterans (7.15%) than most states. About 7% of the veterans are women.

When focusing on Georgia, we see the state is in general at a nice American average of 10.37% veterans. However, Georgia has one of the highest US percentage of female veterans at 9.3%.

When looking at the counties in Georgia, we noticed quite a lot of counties have a much higher amount of veterans than the US average, of which Liberty County triumphs over most counties at 26.04% veterans. Liberty County also has the highest amount of female veterans in Georgia at about a quarter of the veterans. The lowest amounts of females and veterans are both in the smaller counties.

Veterans in the USA in 2005-2009
The USA had over 22 million veterans (22,894,578) in 2005-2009; this comes down to a total of 10.12% of the available civilian population (ages 18 or above).
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The average percentage of veterans in the available population across all states is 10.99%. This is different from the total in the USA, because some states are housing a much larger percentage of veterans than other states.

An average value, or a mean, is a summary one gets by adding all values and dividing by the amount of data. In this case, we added all the percentages and divided by 50 states. An average can get distorted by outliers. For example, when two neighbors have 2 trees, and a third neighbor has 10 trees, the average amount of trees they have, is (2 + 2+ 10) / 3 = 4.67 trees. So the average of the trees has been pulled up because of the tree-rich neighbor.

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​In the following boxplot, we can see a summary of the distribution of the veteran population among the civilian population: all percentages of each state is used to make this boxplot. A boxplot is a summary graph: the big line in the middle is the median, which is the middle value if you put all values in a row from low to high. In this case, the median is 11.17%.

A median is less distorted by outliers, which can be both a negative and a positive point. In our tree example, the median is 2 because a sorted row would be 2, 2, 10, with the middle being our median. So the median would be a better estimate of our population of trees. However, the median does not say anything about that one neighbor-rich tree. This is why it is better to report both the mean and the median when summarizing a lot of data.

​The boxplot also shows us in which values half of the states fall: these are the edges of the orange box: exactly a quarter of all states have percentages above the median that fit within the box, and exactly a quarter of all states have percentages below the median that fit within the box. The difference between the lower half of these values and the upper half of these values is 2.08% (also called the interquartile range). This means half of all the states veteran percentages fall between 9.95% and 12.03% (these values were calculated by the program).

The other half of the states fall either below or above these percentages. Those are called the whiskers of the box: these represent the upper and lower 25% of all the states. This means a quarter of the states have a higher percentage than 12.03% veterans, and a quarter of the states have below 9.95% veterans.

As can be seen in the plot, two very specific states are so different from the other states, that the box plot program has pointed towards them as being outliers. State number 2 in my dataset stands for Alaska, and state number 33 is the state of New York. Looking at the boxplot, we can conclude that Alaska has a very large amount of veterans (15.00%) compared to their civilian population, while New York has a much lower percentage of veterans (7.15%). 

​Gender of veterans in USA
Next, we will look at the gender percentage of the veterans in the USA. The average percentage of veteran males across all US states is 93.04%. The median is not that different at 93.20%. The average amount of females is simply remaining percentage: 6.96%, while their median is 6.80%.

​For males, three states are outliers: 2, 47, and 21. The lowest percentage of males (and thus the highest percentage of female veterans) is Alaska once again with 88.1% males. The second lowest percentage is Virginia with 88.8%, and the third lowest is Maryland with 89.9% males.
 
Focus on Georgia
Georgia housed almost 7 million of those veterans (6,922,965) in 2005-2009, and showed a similar percentage (10.37%) as the US average and mean. Georgia would fall only slightly below the median (the big fat line) in the first boxplot shown earlier. Georgia has 90.7% males, which means that Georgia has almost 10% female veterans. On the boxplot, they would fall at the bottom whisker. When looking Georgia up in the row going from highest to lowest percentage of males, it is clear that Georgia and Hawaii are the two states that make up the bottom of the whisker: they both have 90.7% males, and thus 9.3% females.
 
Next, we will looking within Georgia counties. The data for each Georgia county is available. We notice that the county with the least veterans within the civilian population has only 4.98% veterans, while the county with the largest amount of veterans has 26.04%. We can see that this lower end of veterans is not so much weird as is the highest amount of veterans, when we look at the boxplot.

Multiple counties stick out with their high amount of veterans. The largest outlier is the county with zip code 13179, which is aptly called Liberty County, GA. The next highest is the county with zip code 13039: Camden, GA with 20.32% veterans. The ten counties with the highest amount of veterans are listed in the table with their zip code:

​The county where this company Gallica resides at is Newton, GA, which has 10.93% of veterans living in its county; this is very much in the middle pack of the Georgia counties: ranked 57 out of 159 measured counties. The surrounding counties of Morgan, Rockdale, and Walton score respectively rank 43, 48, and 83 in the top 159 of veterans.

Liberty County has the highest percentage of veterans in Georgia: 26.04%.

Gender of veterans in GA
When we zoom in once again onto the gender division of the veterans, it is clear that some counties have no female veterans living in them (during 2005-2009), such as Clay, GA, Webster, GA, Echols, GA, and Wheeler, GA. Note that these counties are not as large as most of the counties, with exception of Wheeler, GA. The counties with the highest percentage of female veterans living in their counties are Liberty, GA (23.8% female veterans), and Talbot, GA (22.4% female veterans).