World University Rankings

MicroProject Overview

There are hundreds of organizations that rank universities, including US News and World Report, QS World University Rankings, Times Higher Education (THE), and many others.

The Times Higher Education (THE) provides a clean, well-documented CSV that includes their rankings based on the "performance data on universities for students and their families, academics, university leaders, governments and industry". Their 2020 dataset includes almost 1,400 universities across 92 countries and includes 13 performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. Their website with additional details on this dataset is found here: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/content/world-university-rankings

In this MicroProject, you will explore basic DataFrame operations on the Times Higher Education university rankings.

Data Science Skills

In this microproject, you will explore the world university rankings dataset and strengthen the following Data Science skills:

  • Importing data into a DataFrame from a CSV file using df.read_csv
  • Using conditionals to find a subset of data in a DataFrame using df[df.Country == "United States"]
  • Using and resetting the index value of a DataFrame using df.index and df.reset_index
  • Selecting a random sample from a DataFrame using df.sample

Let's nerd out!

MicroProject in Visual Studio Code
MicroProject in Visual Studio Code
DataFrame of the full Times Higher Education dataset of world university rankings
DataFrame of the full Times Higher Education dataset of world university rankings
DataFrame of top, large universities in the United States
DataFrame of top, large universities in the United States
Times Higher Education website of their world university rankings
Times Higher Education website of their world university rankings

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-world-university-rankings --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-world-university-rankings folder.
  • Open microproject-world-university-rankings.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!