“A hackathon is any event of any duration where people come together to solve problems.”
In this task you are required to utilise your learning over the entire Bootcamp period to work together as a team and tackle the challenge outlined below.
This task contributes 15% towards your overall assignment for MS4S12 – Professional Skills for Data & AI. You will be assessed on your ability to utilise your professional skills applied to this task. In particular, your teamwork, communication and problem-solving skills. As well as your ability to utilise the learning undertaken across your Bootcamp modules to complete this task.
Challenge Brief – What is going on in the UK housing market?
“UK average house prices increased by 7.6% over the year to November 2020, up from 5.9% in October 2020, to stand at a record high of £250,000; this is the highest annual growth rate the UK has seen since June 2016” (ONS, 2020). House prices have continued to increase, the “UK average house prices increased by 10.2% over the year to March 2021, up from 9.2% in February 2021; this is the highest annual growth rate the UK has seen since August 2007” (ONS, May 2021).” The average UK house price was at a record high of £270,000 in September 2021, which is £28,000 higher than this time last year” (ONS, November 2021).
Unemployment has increase, hence pay is being cut, yet house prices are going up and up. The Bank of England has raised interest rates for the first time in more than three years, in response to calls to tackle surging price rises. The task is for you to explore the current state of play in the UK housing market and look to evaluate the impact of this in the wider context of the current pandemic.
Some questions to consider could be:
- Who/where are the winners and losers?
- Did the stamp duty change cause a bubble?
- Should I buy a house now, or am I better off waiting for a crash?
- Will there be a crash? Is it likely to be in 2022 or further in the future?
This activity is worth a total of 3 credits (15% of this module). You will be assessed against 3 activities: the final presentation, engagement with your team and individual contribution to the task.
Key Tasks:
- Initial project brief discussion and team allocation
- Role/ task delegation and team planning
- Data gathering – GitHub
- Exploratory data analysis
- Propose/ discus hypotheses and tests for analysis
- Analysis of data – using techniques taught across week 2 and 3 of bootcamp
- Summarise results and findings
- Produce suitable visualisations
- Produce presentation
- Presentation delivery discussion
- Team presentations
- Review/ evaluation