Built an interactive dashboard to explore the Belly Button Biodiversity dataset, which catalogs the microbes that colonize human navels.

The dataset reveals that a small handful of microbial species (also called operational taxonomic units, or OTUs, in the study) were present in more than 70% of people, while the rest were relatively rare. The following outlines the steps taken.

1. Used the D3 library to read in samples.json.

2. Created a horizontal bar chart with a dropdown menu to display the top 10 OTUs found in that individual.

3. Created a bubble chart that displays each sample.

4. Created a Guage chart adapting from https://plot.ly/javascript/gauge-charts/ to plot the weekly washing frequency of the individual. The values ranged from 0 through 9.

5. Displayed each key-value pair from the metadata JSON object in the page, i.e., an individual's demographic information.

6. Updated all of the plots any time that a new sample is selected.

The final app looked like this =>

Deployed the app to GitHub's free static page hosting service.

Hulcr, J. et al.(2012) A Jungle in There: Bacteria in Belly Buttons are Highly Diverse, but Predictable. Retrieved from: http://robdunnlab.com/projects/belly-button-biodiversity/results-and-data/