Tasks and Duties
Objective
This task focuses on planning your approach to acquiring and exploring publicly available financial data using Python. You will identify potential data sources, set clear objectives, and outline a plan for your data analysis work.
Expected Deliverables
- A DOC file containing a comprehensive project plan.
- A detailed narrative explaining the selection of public financial data and your approach to data acquisition, data cleaning, and preliminary analysis.
- Descriptions of any Python libraries you plan to use (e.g., pandas, NumPy, matplotlib) and why these are beneficial for the task.
Key Steps
- Data Source Identification: Research and list at least two publicly accessible financial data sources. Explain why these sources are relevant.
- Objective Definition: Define the key questions you wish to answer with your data analysis (e.g., market trends, volatility, risk factors).
- Plan Outline: Develop a detailed plan including steps for data extraction, cleaning, and preliminary exploration. Include a timeline and milestones to manage the estimated 30-35 hours of work.
- Tool & Library Justification: Identify and justify the Python libraries and tools you intend to utilize.
Evaluation Criteria
- Clarity and comprehensiveness of the project plan.
- Logical structure and feasibility of the timeline.
- Detailed explanation of data source selection and the planned analysis steps.
- Overall presentation and adherence to the task requirements in the DOC file.
This task helps you set a concrete foundation for subsequent analysis, ensuring that you grasp the strategic planning phase needed for real-life data analytics projects.
Objective
This task is designed to focus on the data wrangling and processing aspect of financial data analytics. You will execute your plan by outlining the process of cleaning, structuring, and preparing your chosen public financial dataset for analysis using Python.
Expected Deliverables
- A DOC file that details your approach to data cleaning and preparation.
- Step-by-step process descriptions including the handling of missing values, outlier detection, and normalization procedures.
- Annotated code snippets and pseudo-code discussing key operations using Python libraries such as pandas.
Key Steps
- Data Importation: Explain how you will import the dataset from a public source and what initial assessments (data types, missing values) need to be conducted.
- Data Cleaning: Outline methods for cleaning the dataset, including strategies for handling missing or inconsistent data and any necessary data transformations.
- Data Structuring: Detail how you will organize the data for analysis—this may include creating new features, merging datasets, or converting categorical variables.
- Documenting the Process: Include code snippets and explanations to demonstrate the process, ensuring clarity even for readers unfamiliar with the code.
Evaluation Criteria
- Completeness and logical consistency of the data cleaning process.
- Clarity in explaining each step with relevant Python code examples.
- Relevance and accuracy of transformation techniques for financial data.
- Quality of documentation and adherence to the task requirements in the DOC file.
This step-by-step approach will strengthen your practical skills in preparing raw data for analysis, which is essential for accurate financial analytics.
Objective
This task emphasizes the importance of exploratory data analysis (EDA) and visualization in understanding financial trends. You will utilize Python to extract insights from a publicly available financial dataset and visually communicate these findings in a comprehensive report.
Expected Deliverables
- A DOC file containing an in-depth exploratory data analysis report.
- Descriptions of key insights drawn from the analysis including summary statistics and trends.
- Visualizations such as graphs, histograms, or scatter plots with corresponding code annotations.
Key Steps
- Data Exploration: Describe your approach to examining the dataset, including exploring key variables, checking distributions, and identifying anomalies.
- Statistical Analysis: Provide summary statistics (mean, median, mode, standard deviation) along with any initial hypotheses about the data.
- Visualization Techniques: Outline the creation of visualizations to support your insights. Explain the choice of plots and how they help in understanding data trends.
- Interpretation: Discuss the implications of the patterns or anomalies identified. Provide practical insights that could drive further analysis or business decisions.
Evaluation Criteria
- The analytical depth and clarity of insights derived from the data.
- Effectiveness and relevance of the visualizations in supporting the analysis.
- Quality of the Python code and clarity of annotations provided in the DOC file.
- Overall structure, coherence, and documentation quality in the final deliverable.
This task is designed to solidify your ability to derive and communicate meaningful insights from complex data sets, which is a critical skill in financial analytics.
Objective
The final task is to culminate your internship experience by building and evaluating a predictive model using Python. Focus on forecasting a specific financial metric such as stock prices by applying a basic model (e.g., linear regression). Your final deliverable will be a detailed report that documents every step of the predictive modeling process.
Expected Deliverables
- A DOC file with a comprehensive report covering model development and performance evaluation.
- Detailed descriptions of data splitting, model training, testing procedures and performance metrics used for evaluation.
- Annotated Python code segments that explain your modeling decisions and data handling.
Key Steps
- Model Planning: Identify the financial metric to be predicted and discuss the rationale behind selecting it. Provide a short literature review if necessary.
- Data Splitting: Outline your strategy for dividing the data into training and testing sets. Explain the reasoning behind the chosen split ratio.
- Model Building: Explain the steps taken to build the predictive model in Python. Include discussion on feature selection, parameter tuning, and any preprocessing steps applied.
- Performance Evaluation: Discuss the evaluation metrics (e.g., R-squared, MSE) used to validate your model. Analyze the model's performance and suggest any improvements.
Evaluation Criteria
- Clarity and thoroughness in documenting the model development process.
- Technical accuracy in applying predictive modeling techniques using Python.
- Insightful analysis of model performance, including potential limitations and suggestions for improvement.
- Quality of the DOC file presentation, ensuring a logical flow and adherence to the provided guidelines.
This final task is an opportunity to integrate your planning, data preparation, analysis, and modeling skills into one cohesive project report, simulating a real-world financial forecasting scenario.