Can you estimate the age of an abalone?
📖 Background
You are working as an intern for an abalone farming operation in Japan. For operational and environmental reasons, it is an important consideration to estimate the age of the abalones when they go to market.
Determining an abalone's age involves counting the number of rings in a cross-section of the shell through a microscope. Since this method is somewhat cumbersome and complex, you are interested in helping the farmers estimate the age of the abalone using its physical characteristics.
💾 The data
You have access to the following historical data (source):
Abalone characteristics:
- "sex" - M, F, and I (infant).
- "length" - longest shell measurement.
- "diameter" - perpendicular to the length.
- "height" - measured with meat in the shell.
- "whole_wt" - whole abalone weight.
- "shucked_wt" - the weight of abalone meat.
- "viscera_wt" - gut-weight.
- "shell_wt" - the weight of the dried shell.
- "rings" - number of rings in a shell cross-section.
- "age" - the age of the abalone: the number of rings + 1.5.
Acknowledgments: Warwick J Nash, Tracy L Sellers, Simon R Talbot, Andrew J Cawthorn, and Wes B Ford (1994) "The Population Biology of Abalone (Haliotis species) in Tasmania. I. Blacklip Abalone (H. rubra) from the North Coast and Islands of Bass Strait", Sea Fisheries Division, Technical Report No. 48 (ISSN 1034-3288).
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv('./data/abalone.csv')
df💪 Competition challenge
Create a report that covers the following:
- How does weight change with age for each of the three sex categories?
- Can you estimate an abalone's age using its physical characteristics?
- Investigate which variables are better predictors of age for abalones.
✅ Checklist before publishing
- Rename your workspace to make it descriptive of your work. N.B. you should leave the notebook name as notebook.ipynb.
- Remove redundant cells like the judging criteria, so the workbook is focused on your story.
- Check that all the cells run without error.
⌛️ Time is ticking. Good luck!
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import seaborn as sns
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.style.use('seaborn')
sns.set_theme(style="white")
Data Validation
df.isna().sum()df.isnull().sum()df.dtypesExploratory Data Analysis (EDA)
1. How does weight change with age for each of the three sex categories?
sns.scatterplot(data=df, x='age', y='whole_wt', hue='sex')Visualizing gender counts