Organisations across domains and sectors have realised that data is the new currency. Every major strategic decision made now is data-driven. In this data-driven world, data analytics is an essential part of data science. If we look at it from a corporate perspective, data analytics tools help businesses to understand the importance of their actions. It helps in analyzing the data which further assists businesses in optimizing their performance. It also helps organizations in gaining a sound understanding of the subject-matter that is needed for growth of the company.
Data analytics is a skill every data scientist has to learn as all the assignments begin with data evaluation. This is one of the important reasons for having a practical and hands-on understanding of data analytics projects. In this article, we’ll take you through 7 data analytics project ideas which will focus on data scraping, exploratory analysis, and data visualization. We’ll explain these terms as we discuss the projects in each of these in detail.
So, let’s get started with some of the top project ideas that will help you build a strong portfolio and add more value to your resume as you progress in the field of data science.
Data Scraping Project Ideas
As you begin with any data analytics project, data scraping is the first step that initiates the process. As the name suggests, it means collecting or pulling of data from the web and arranging it into a usable format. This process of data or web scraping can be automated with the help of tools like Octoparse, Parsehub or even by using libraries such as Scrapy or Beautiful Soup.
1. Search Engine Optimization
Popularly known as SEO, it is a technique of using tools to ensure that your website gets a high ranking in the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Using the data scraping tools, you can scrape for the ranking of competitor companies’ websites and get access to all the keywords being used by them for description of their website. This is mainly done by the SEO team which collects the top ranking keywords.
As this information is gathered, the marketing team can target the top keywords to get your company’s website higher on a results page. We all want to be ranked in the first page of google search engine results. So, this is how data scraping helps you achieve it. This is an excellent data analytics project idea to apply in the field of marketing.
2. Social Media Reputation Monitoring
In the generation of millenials and Gen Zs, every brand understands the crucial role that their social media platforms play in building a relationship with the customer. One comment over the bad quality or service of the product can malign the brand’s image in just a couple of minutes.
So what can we do about it? We can use the data scraping tools to collect the mass of data that is being generated on social media. This data is relevant to your company and thus helps you in identifying comments related to your brand’s products or services. It will ensure that you do not miss out on any mention of your brand on the web that puts it in a bad light. And if you do find it, you can strategize and address it.
3. Equity Research
The next data analytics project idea on our list is equity research which can be applied to the field of finance. Equity refers to the value that a company would be returned to the company’s shareholders in case all its assets are liquidated and the debts are paid off. In simpler terms, it can also be considered as a degree of ownership in a firm or asset after deducting all the debts associated with that asset.
Now how can data analytics help us here?
When it comes to the shareholder values, every company needs to be sure of that worth. With the help of a data scraping tool, you can eliminate any uncertainty regarding the worth of a business owner. As you use data scraping here, you can check the web for the amount of ownership your competitors have over their company or what individual shares are worth to keep your company competitive. When you conduct constant research on the stock values, it keeps you on top of an uncertain financial entity and also tells you when buying and selling shares will be profitable.
Exploratory Data Analysis Project Ideas
Now the next type of data analytics project is in Exploratory Data Analysis. Also known as EDA, it looks at the data structure and allows you to find out its pattern sensing its characteristics. It can be done with the use of languages like R and Python as they consist of pre-existing algorithms that can be used to carry out the work for you. The process also helps in cleaning the data, extracting important variables and testing your fundamental assumptions. It is one of the most time consuming tasks for any data analyst. Nevertheless, it is one of the most rewarding processes.
4. World Happiness Report
We’ve read a number of times about the top 10 happiest countries in the world. Haven’t we? How about using this exploratory data analysis project idea to create a World Happiness Report?
The happiness score is measured by taking the average of 6 factors to define the ‘happiness level’ of a country. These six factors are: economic production, social support, freedom, absence of corruption, life expectancy, and generosity.
The first step here is to collect all the data needed for your project. You can use the dataset from here and utilize it for understanding the patterns and data structures used to design this report. As you assess the dataset, it will hone your technical skills and make it easier for you to define and achieve the goals you’ve set for your project.
5. Detection of Global Suicide Rates
Suicide rates annually across the world remain a cause of concern. In stark contrast to the previous project, you can use this data analytics project idea to find the number of suicide cases that occur worldwide. Here is a link to a Kaggle dataset. It contains details about Suicide rates, Human Developement Index (HDI), GDP, demographics of countries year by year from 1985 to 2016. The idea behind this dataset that you can use for reference was to see if there is any co-relation between these indicators and suicide rates.
You can explore this dataset to find out if any patterns exist in these suicide rates. You can also find out if the overall suicide rates are increasing or decreasing, which gender commits suicide more. This analysis will help you in evaluating percentages of suicide rates.
Data Visualization Project Ideas
We all can read data but the human brain is always fascinated with visuals. Data Visualization deals with the graphic representation of data in the form of charts, bar graphs, pie charts. Good visualizations always make a great addition to any data analytics portfolio. Some of the visualization tools are Google Charts, Tableau, Canva Graph Maker.
6. Find Out the Percentage of Pollution in the US
As per the data provided by the American Lung Association, in 2020, almost half of the US population which accounts to almost 150 million people were exposed to severe levels of air pollution which put their health at risk. This is when most of the year saw lockdown due to the COVID situation! Imagine how worse it would be if we were to fetch the data for pre-covid pollution days.
This data visualization project can help you give answers to questions like: Which are the most and least polluted states in the US? or Comparing the pollution level in the last ten years and upcoming ten years. Here is a Kaggle dataset which contains information about the 4 major pollutants from the year 2000 to 2016 in the US. You can analyze this and use it to find out the percentage of air pollution in the US.
7. Finding Every Upcoming Social Eclipse
After the famous solar eclipse in Aug 2017, the first eclipse that travelled from coast to coast over the US in almost a century, Washington Post created an interactive tool using data analytics tools. This contains globe visualization showing the path of the eclipse along with predicting all the future eclipse paths till 2080!
All you need to do is put your year of birth and you’ll get to know how many eclipses are left in your lifetime! Check out this amazing tool here. You can use a similar concept to find every upcoming lunar eclipse!
What You Need To Do Now
As you’ll work on data scraping, exploratory analysis and data visualization projects, your data analysis abilities will improve. You can take the example of the data analytics projects mentioned above to create a similar or entirely new project idea!
For more in depth data analysis, You can enroll for free introduction to data analysis using excel course offered by Great Learning.
Knowing that data is the present and the future, the main takeaway from this article is that you need to keep practicing your skills by working on hands-on projects.
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