Python EDA on US Health Data Reveals Gender Gaps in Smoking and BMI

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A developer conducted exploratory data analysis on the NHANES dataset, a CDC health survey covering 5,735 US adults across variables like BMI, smoking, and demographics. After cleaning and outlier removal, the working dataset was reduced to approximately 5,406 rows. Statistical testing found that 53.3% of males reported smoking compared to 31.2% of females, a difference confirmed as statistically significant via chi-square testing. An independent t-test showed females had a slightly higher mean BMI (29.09) than males (28.21), also statistically significant despite the small gap. A separate proportion test found that 47.8% of women aged 40–50 had a BMI above 30, falling just short of a statistically significant majority.

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