Inspiration
When we were looking for companies we could work with we had a meeting with Cameron, the Brandeis mentor for Clipper Ship Foundation and he was very passionate about finding out how we can better the data collection and visualization problem they were facing and we really wanted to make it become a reality. We had the skills needed to code up the solution and we believed that we could actually make an impact on the organization
What it does
Clipper Ship’s haphazard data collection method makes aggregating, cleaning, and visualizing data both challenging and time consuming. We first created an excel sheet that asks the grants important question ex: How many youth do you have in your program?, How much grant money did you use?, how many were placed into housing, etc. We then created an internal tool for data analytics that allows Clipper Ship Foundation to upload excel sheets that are in a standardized format and shows them important information on how their grant money is being used at the different non-profits they have given it to to support the youth in their local community.
How we built it
We built this application using PyScript, a python front and back end software that was released on April 30th, 2022. PyScript is a framework that allows users to create rich Python applications in the browser using HTML's interface and the power of Pyodide, WASM, and modern web technologies. The PyScript framework provides users at every experience level with access to an expressive, easy-to-learn programming language with countless applications. PyScript made it easy for use to import data analytics languages like pandas and matplotlib to python while containing an easy to use front-end as well.
Challenges we ran into
Some of the challenges we ran into revolved around our initial approach of using Node.js and Python. On Node.js we ran into the problem of we couldn’t run python scripts in javascript and we couldn’t figure it out after 4-5 hours, we even tried stackoverflow and posted our own question and it didn’t help. So we decided to pivot to Pyscript in a last ditch effort to save our project. There was a learning curve when learning PyScript and also barely any documentation on PyScript so error handling was very difficult, but we eventually got it working.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
What we learned
We learned a lot. We learned PyScript, an entirely new framework in both the coding world and to us, but we also learned a lot about data visualization and Node.js and MonogoDB even though they didn’t come out to be our final project.
What's next for Clipper Ship Data Analysis
If we want to continue the next steps would be getting in contact with Clipper Ship Foundation and combing through their old data and standardizing it into an excel sheet that all companies that receive grants will use from now on. From there we can start fleshing this project out with actual data and Clipper Ship can see how their company can actually perform.
Overall we set out to create a data analytics tool that will allow the Clipper Ship Foundation to understand their data and improve data collection even with the road bumps we faced on the way. We believe our impact will not only help Clipper Ship, but also the non-profit organizations they work with and the youth impacted by the programs.
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