Hydrangea Hacks 2021 Finance Hack and Top 6 Winner
- A simulation game where the player has to learn how to read the market conditions and make informed financial decisions based on the tools the game provides
- We use historical stock prices, interest rates and inflation data (aka real data from 2000-2020) to simulate the market
- Players will be presented with challenges and opportunities for to make decisions based on their current financial knowledge and in-game wealth/market conditions
- Show cashflow summary graph at the end of 20 years, show high score graphs so player can see how they fare among other players
- Allows player to make their own decision and build confidence/take responsibility for the outcomes of their financial decisions
- Goal is to help player understand the relationship between commodity prices, interest rates and inflation, wealth management, assets/liabilities etc.
- In essence, give them real-life scenarios to help them learn how to read the market
- Re-playable: see their end net worth value after 20 years, see the high scores board. Replay to learn which decisions the player made that went wrong or could have been better.
- Devpost Link: https://devpost.com/software/finance-frenzy/
We wanted to build a hack that not only focuses on empowering females, but also anyone who uses it. As females in STEM, we saw that the there is quite a significant gender gap in both Computer Science and Finance industries.
Since our team consists of both Computer Science and Finance majors, we figured this is a golden opportunity to build something that utilizes the best of both areas of this knowledge.
Just like programming, the number of females seen working in the Finance industry is pretty low. This can also be seen from the amount of women being less financial literate than men in general, regardless of whether they are living in a developed or developing country.
This financial literacy issue is still a common issue in the world’s most advanced economies. In highly educated cities like Canada or Singapore, only 59-68% of the total population are financially literate, and it is just the basics.
Since the start of this pandemic, money management has never been more important to many families. And unfortunately, without the tools of financial literacy, families are struggling to save, invest and understand the implications of their decisions to their wealth.
Furthermore, schools never emphasize on the importance of wealth management and finance education. We were always taught that Math is important, Chemistry is important, but what about accounting? Taxes? Investing? These areas of knowledge are just as important to a young adolescent as traditional school subjects.
So we build Finance Frenzy because we believe knowledge is empowerment. This is an educational game app that can help guide anyone to the path of financial literacy.
- The prototype is built with Python and a library called PyQt to make the UI elements
- Downloaded historical U.S. interests and inflation rates from 2000-2020
- To simplify the stock exchange, we used S&P sector prices as industry benchmark prices. Players can invest in only these 11 sector stocks, each representing a different industry.
- Our demo showcase is the fully designed app we wanted to make, after the prototype phase.
- Clone the repo
- Run app.py
- Learning a new library in Python, PyQt took us some time.
- Our teammates are 12 hours apart, we are all living in different time zones, so we had to keep that in mind when initiating a meeting
- Time limit, we only had a short amount of time to implement all the ideas we wanted to include in the prototype Finding free sites that provide the historical 20-year data we needed
- Finished a simplistic working prototype despite being pressed for time
- Even though this is the first time we teamed up, we are proud of the fact that this hackathon allows us to utilize each team member’s strength to complete this hack: a prototype, a UI demo and a demo video.
- Python: Skills level up +1 with PyQt
- Working together virtually, even with different time zones
- Understanding more about each other’s area of knowledge (i.e. Finance and Computer Science) and finding a project that synergies with these 2 industries
- More visually appealing UI
- Add more data (i.e. more news, more detailed stats and historical data)
- Allows game to be saved at any point in time
- Easy/Hard mode: show hints for new players, hide hints for advanced players
- Present challenges and opportunities to the player every few months to encourage more decision-making and put skills to the test (i.e. scam deals, real estate opportunities, investing deals, etc.)