41  CPI Index

This article tracks the Consumer Price Index average food price in the United Kingdom. The author notes a drop in food prices in February 2020 and attributes that to the Corona Virus pandemic. She has 1 chart in her article.

The article is on Medium, which means if you frequent that site often then you won’t be able to see the image unless you pay for a membership. Here is a screen capture of the image if the article won’t show.

The data used to create that chart can be found in these excel files, one file for each month of data:

  1. Load in the datasets. Note that NOT all the datasets have an identical structure.
  2. Wrangle the data and prepare the files to be combined into one overall dataset.
  3. Combine (aka “stack” or append) the datasets into one overall dataset
  4. Use the combined dataset to recreate the chart.

Now for the fun/challenging part! Some of the food items used to calculate the CPI changed starting in February 2020: some were removed and others were added. One could argue that the dip in the CPI was due to the change in items rather than a result of the Corona Virus.

  1. Create 1 or 2 charts that investigate this hypothesis.
  2. Write a a paragraph or two to articulate the story the data tells regarding the dip in CPI and the change of items included.
  3. Render the .qmd file. Push all the files created in the rendering process into your GitHub repository.

Submit

In I-learn submit a link to the .md file on GitHub.