Jiashu Week 7

Hi, my name is Jiashu. Welcome to my seventh Senior Project blog post!

This week was all about data processing, interpretation, and initial visualizations. After finalizing the key metrics last week, I began analyzing the results in detail to understand the broader impact of the subsidy model.

The first major finding is that the inequality index (Theil index) of the transit system significantly decreased after introducing the subsidy, while system accessibility increased. These two changes indicate that our model had a meaningful, positive effect—making transit access more equitable and improving overall reachability across the ZIP-code pairs.

To better understand the scale of this change, I created a comparison using several subsidy levels:

• Base case (no subsidy) 
• Partial subsidy thresholds 
• Full or optimistic subsidy scenario 

For each of these, I compared both the inequality index and accessibility scores to see how different levels of investment affect outcomes. This helped identify where major gains occur and whether there are diminishing returns at higher subsidy levels.

Lastly, I began creating summary statistics and graphs to support our findings visually. These early visualizations include line graphs showing changes in accessibility and inequality under each scenario, and charts that summarize key trends.

Next week, I’ll continue building out more visualizations and start preparing my presentation materials.

See you next week,

Jiashu