April's Time Machine

This is an interactive learning project. When complete, it will serve as a time machine allowing you to "travel the world" and actively learn a full information about every event and all its impacts.

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Inspiration

I am a senior political science major from Washington, DC, trying to get more hands-on experience before attending a M.S. in Computer Science for Non-Computer Science majors degree with a focus in Cybersecurity. I love forensics and computers and want to learn more, but my love for crime and problem-solving came from a love of political science and law. I hope to work for a government agency working in computer and child crimes. My political science has helped me with data visualization in using R statistical programming but it has also quenched my nerd thirst for world history and political practices. I wanted to build a US or World History API and a website with the information autofilled by that API. But 4 hours and a few YouTube videos in, I decided an interactive data visualization project with Python was a tad bit more complete-able. My outline included an interactive map, an interactive timeline, and bar graphs. When hovered over a nation or region, the interactive map would display ways in which the Cold War affected it (ex. Scramble for Africa). I figured this would be cool because my favorite thing about learning is being able to connect the pieces and understanding the bigger picture. Seeing how the Cold War affected the world, is great because the war is typically summarized as a political tension between the United States and "Soviet Union", but its so much more, and it wasn't done without violence or harm, as implied. I am still working to complete my Bokeh pandas_groupby_colormapped bar charts to represent military and civilian deaths by nation during the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. In more time, I will add more pockets and visualizations to my website about the roles of the CIA in the war and history of the KGB for examaple.

What it does

Its an interactive in-depth website for learning purposes. I wish I had this in school. Struggling with ADHD, oftentimes led me to researching subtopics instead of focusing on exam material and if there were a website like this, I know I would have loved it (and gotten a 5 on my APUSH Subject Tes- anyway...)

How we built it

HTML + CSS + JS outline Import data Import data into Bokeh code and run to form (pandas_groupby_colormapped) bar charts **Planned to build interactive map with three.js **Planned to animate timeline with three.js

Challenges we ran into

Running Bokeh was a challenge. It is a challenge, I'm still trying to get my code to run at 9:43am. - If it works, I'll be back by 10:58am. Wish me luck, please.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm giving myself an A+ for submitting my first hackathon project.

What we learned

This project helped me with my CSS skills and transitions between sites. This project also taught me a lot about working within a set time frame. I think from here on, when working on personal projects I will start setting timers/keeping track of where I am spending my time. I appreciated working under pressure- it made me get things done.

What's next for "Cold" War

I'd like for this to be a part of a larger project, a US or world history API that has proven or peer-reviewed data on every subject and illustrates interactive data visualization with Python. I plan to build interactive map models and make my timelines interactive (see README.me)

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