Bechdel Test 🎥

MicroProject Overview

The Bechdel Test, or Bechdel-Wallace Test, is a simple way of measuring the representation of women in a film or other work of fiction. To pass the The Bechdel Test, a work must pass all three criteria:

  1. The work must have at least two women in it,
  2. who talk to each other,
  3. about something other than a man.

The test was popularized by Alison Bechdel's comic, in a 1985 strip called "The Rule". The website BechdelTest.com provides a searchable database of films and their Bechdel Test results, allowing users to explore and analyze patterns in gender representation in cinema.

Data Science Skills

In this microproject, you will explore the Bechdel Test and strengthen the following Data Science skills:

  • Creating a Pivot Table in pandas with df.pivot_table
  • Line Plots in pandas with df.plot.line
  • Area Plots in pandas with df.plot.area
  • Using a JSON API in pandas with pd.read_json

Let's nerd out!

MicroProject in Visual Studio Code
MicroProject in Visual Studio Code
Line Chart Data Visualization of Bechdel Test Scores per Year
Line Chart Data Visualization of Bechdel Test Scores per Year
Area Chart Data Visualization of Percentages of Movies with each Bechdel Test Scores per Year
Area Chart Data Visualization of Percentages of Movies with each Bechdel Test Scores per Year
bechdeltest.com API documentation
bechdeltest.com API documentation

First Time Doing a MicroProject?

Each MicroProject starts with a notebook that we provide to you to get started! You will need to configure a git repository to connect to our `microprojects` remote where we release the starter notebook.

Fetch the Initial Files

In your terminal, navigate to your GitHub repository and merge the initial files by running the following commands:

git fetch microprojects
git merge microprojects/microproject-bechdel-test --allow-unrelated-histories -m "Merging initial files"

Complete the Notebook

If the commands above were successful, you have merged in the initial files to start on the MicroProject.

  • Find the new microproject-bechdel-test folder.
  • Open microproject-bechdel-test.ipynb and complete the MicroProject!

Commit and Grade Your Notebook

Once you have finished your notebook, you must use the built-in GitHub Action to preform automated grading of your MicroProject notebook! You will need to commit your work and then manually run the GitHub Action.

Commit Your Work

To commit your notebook, run the standard git commands in your terminal:

git add -u
git commit -m "microproject completed"
git push

Grade Your Notebook

To grade your notebook, you will need to visit your GitHub repository in your browser.

  • Visit your GitHub repository in your browser
  • Click on the "Actions" tab
  • Under "Workflows", find the workflow for this microproject
  • Click the "Run Workflow" in the blue box, and then the green "Run Workflow"
  • After about 10 seconds, you should see a new job that has started running
    • You can click on the job to watch it run in real-time
    • It will take ~1 minute to run and grade
  • Once the running is complete, the autograding summary will be available!