Microsoft Big Data Hackathon Resources (Vancouver)
ThinkData Works Data sets: https://namara.io/#/
The site consolidates data from open.data.ca, Statistics Canada, Provincial Data sources, GoodLife Fitness, SpotCrime and others. Here are the links to a few datasets of interest:
City of Vancouver Open Data Catalog: https://data.vancouver.ca/datacatalogue/index.htm
British Columbia Open Data Catalog: https://www.opendatabc.ca/dataset
Canadian Government Open Data Portal: https://open.canada.ca/en
Collection of Data sources:
Finance, Economics and Society data: https://www.quandl.com/
You also can use Power Query to retrieve data from Facebook: please read article about it here
Example:
US/Canada Border Wait Times are available here
https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/000fe5aa-1d77-42d1-bfe7-458c51dacfef
The data set is not large (around 1M records) and In itself is not very interesting – as analysis is pretty much limited to location and time - but if mangled with other widely available data sets, could be a basis for relatively interesting exploratory and predictive analysis.
You could integrate and correlate it with:
· Weather data from nearby weather stations: https://climate.weather.gc.ca/
· Canadian dollar exchange rates: https://www.canadianforex.ca/forex-tools/historical-rate-tools/historical-exchange-rates
· Fuel prices: https://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&retrLang=eng&id=3260009&paSer=&pattern=&stByVal=1&p1=1&p2=31&tabMode=dataTable&csid and https://www.energy.gov.on.ca/en/fuel-prices/
· Terror alert levels https://www.dhs.gov/how-do-i/check-national-terrorism-advisory-system-ntas
· …
Using these data sets you could perform both historical analysis (including geo-spatial visualizations) and attempt to build a predictive model.
Trial versions and subscriptions
· Office Professional Plus 2013 or Office 365 (we recommend to use Office 365 Pro Plus version)
· Excel Add-ons: Power Map, Power Query
Online trainings
· Getting Started with Microsoft Azure Machine Learning
· Faster Insights to Data with Power BI Jump Start
· Implementing Big Data Analysis
Other resources
· Custom Maps in Power MAP (Custom Maps work in Office 365 Pro Plus only)
· Canadian County and Postal Code Shading in Power Map for Excel
Event Presentations
· Building an Active Mix model in Azure ML
· HDInsight Excel
· Power BI
Link: https://1drv.ms/1cp2eU1