CS2400 Group Assignment

Creation of a Data Product

August 2025

CS2400 Group Assignment (15%)

In groups of three students, work on either (A) or (B).

(A)

Creation of a data product that will help users cope with the rising inflation rate in the coming years.

Deadline: 3 November 2025 (Monday)

In the past decade, Singapore enjoyed a very low inflation rate of between 0 and 1 percent.  Minister Lawrence Wong has warned that in the coming years, Singapore’s inflation rate is expected to rise due to turbulent and uncertain geopolitical environment, issues with supplies, and because Singapore is transitioning to become more sustainable.  The inflation rate is also not expected to return to 0 to 1 percent as the past decade was an anomaly.

This year, Mr Ravi Menon’s Annual Report Media Conference focused on inflation.  He raised a few interesting points:

· inflation affects everyone, however, it affects the lower-income groups more

· Singaporeans are concerned about inflation

· inflation had already been on the rise even before the war in Ukraine, but the war made it worse

· the inflation rate is projected to increase to a peak of 4.0-4.5% in Q3 2022

· the inflation rate is expected to come down in 2023, but will remain well above 1.5%

Inflation is serious because it directly affects our cost of living.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic started, cost of living had already been one of the top concerns not for just for Singaporeans, but for many people around the world.  Covid-19 made the problem more serious, and now global events (like the war in Ukraine) has exacerbated the problem further.

In Singapore, the issue of cost of living is compounded because of our rapidly ageing population.  According to UOB economist Francis Tan, in 2018, the number of people above 65 will equal those under 15 for the first time in history (he referred to this as a “demographic time bomb”).  This greying demographic means that we will have an ever-greater proportion of retirees in the population.  Retirees are especially hard hit by rising costs as they do not work, and therefore no longer earn a salary.  They depend on their life savings and CPF for their day-to-day expenditure, and this is why controlling the cost of living is especially important for them.  They are concerned that the purchasing power of money will be diminished if the inflation rate is high as they have to make their savings last.  Retirees literally have to stretch every dollar in their savings.

Singapore is also vulnerable to increasing food prices because we import over 90% of the food we consume.  Relying so heavily on food supplied from overseas means that we face unique challenges, e.g., having to accept prices set by food producers (link).

In 2022 and beyond, cost of living is likely to remain a major concern for many households in Singapore, particularly for the low- and middle-income families, and especially for sandwich generation (those with young children and aged parents to care for).

This assignment focusses on the financial hardships brought about by inflation.  As this is a multifaced problem, it is a complicated one to tackle.  However, it is important and for many families, very real.  This is why you will be working on it.

Format

Your report should be a document that aims to convince a venture capitalist to invest in your idea.  As this is not the typical academic report (venture capitalists are not interested in reading the usual academic term paper!), the “Introduction ® Literature Review ® Methodology ® Results and Discussion ® Conclusions” need not be followed.  In your groups, discuss what format this document should take.

To put together a compelling case, you may think of incorporating video or audio.  If you decide to include videos in your report, the best tool to use is Adobe InDesign as it allows good control over the placement of the video.  Convince a venture capitalist how your data product will help users manage their expenditure, and why people would want to use your data product.

Preliminary Work

1. View the following video to understand inflation: https://youtu.be/UMAELCrJxt0

2. Consult Investopedia (https://www.investopedia.com/) and InvestorWords (http://www.investorwords.com/) to understand these economic terms:

(a) inflation

(b) purchasing power

(c) cost of living

(d) Consumer Price Index (CPI)

3. Read the articles in Annex A to understand the impact of inflation.

4. Reflect on how rising costs have affected you and your family.  Your parents work hard to support the family.  Speak to them about inflation to understand the issue from their perspective.

5. Retrieve articles on the impact of inflation on people in other countries from the Nexis Uni database (http://www.ntu.edu.sg/library/).

6. Read What is Data Science? by Mike Loukides (2010) to understand what a data product is.

7. Read How Venture Capital Works by Bob Zider (1998) to understand who a

venture capitalist is, and how venture capital works.

8. Think about the structure of a document that a venture capitalist would be attracted to read.  This is a person who manages a lot of money, and who is constantly sent all sorts of ideas clamoring for his attention/interest/backing/money.  He will spend only a short time on each document (he’s got to get back to monitoring his investments).  What sort of report will attract him enough to take a second, third, fourth look, and to ultimately fund your data product?

Now, you are ready to start working on your data product.  Your objective is to conceptually design (you do not have to do any programming or calculations) a data product that helps to cope with, or betters still, beat inflation in the coming years.  You are advised to focus your data product on a particular group of people (e.g., people who have been retrenched, people who have had their salary reduced, retirees, or the 400,000 Singaporeans living on $5 a day, newlyweds, or diabetics, etc.).

Working in groups of three (you may choose your own group members), write a 2,700‒3,000-word proposal to a venture capitalist, for a data product that can help make prices more transparent, and in doing so, enable Singaporeans to make better purchasing decisions, and lower their cost of living.  This data product can be an app mobile phone, a website, or a combination of both.  The aim of your report is to convince the venture capitalist that your data product is worth investing in (in short, you want him to invest in your idea).

Think about the contents (i.e., what you will include in the proposal) and a suitable format for your proposal (i.e., how you would organise and present your contents).  Remember that you want to win your venture capitalist over – you want his buy-in – you want him to fund the development of your data product.

In the past semester, different groups of students have asked if the proposal can include a short video (yes), a recorded interview in the form. of sound clips (yes), flowcharts (yes), infographics (yes), photographs (yes), and screen mockups (yes) in the proposal.

Note these points:

± If you are including a video file, save your video in the MP4 format.

± If you are including an audio file, save your audio in the MP3 format.

You can then add your video or audio file into your Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign document. Upload your proposal in the Microsoft Word format (*.docx) or the Adobe InDesign format (*.indd) to NTULearn by 1 November, 2022 (Tuesday).

Very Important

1. Upload one file per group.

2. The names of all the group members must be on the first page of the report.  Ensure that the names are the same as the ones printed on your matriculation card.

(B)

Creation of a data product that will help users reduce food OR E-waste.

Deadline: 3 November 2025 (Monday)

Food Waste

Let’s start with a definition of food waste.  Food waste refers to food intended for human consumption which is then thrown away.

Exactly where is food wasted?  Food waste happens at every point along the food supply and consumption chain.  This includes food waste from:

· farms

· processing and transport

· hospitality operators (e.g., hotels)

· supermarkets

· households

Because of this, some organisations (e.g., the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University) uses different terms to refer to food waste, depending on where it occurs.  The term “food loss” is used if the waste occurs before the food reaches the consumer and “food waste” is used when the occurs at the retail or consumption stages. (source)

Food waste is one of the biggest waste streams in Singapore, and accounts for about 12 per cent of the total waste generated here.  The amount of food waste has grown by around 20% over the last 10 years.  In 2019, Singapore generated around 744 million kg of food waste.  That is equivalent to 2 bowls of rice per person per day, or around 51,000 double decker buses. (source)

The table below shows the amount of food waste Disposed of, Recycled and Generated in the past 5 years.  The increase in the amount in each category is staggering.  What’s distressing is the low recycling rate (17 – 19% each year).

Food waste is an important problem in Singapore because we import over 90% of our food supply.  Imagine this – every day – every single day – we throw away more than 2 million kilograms of food.  This is how much less food we have to import if we reduce food waste.  In addition, food waste has to end up somewhere.  In Singapore, they are typically incinerated.  The ash from the incineration plant ends up in a landfill.  This puts pressure on land scarce Singapore.

This assignment focusses on the problem of food waste.  As this is a complex problem involving many areas, it is a complicated, yet important one for Singapore.

E-Waste

E-waste is electrical and electronic equipment of any kind that has been discarded.  It includes practically anything powered by an electrical source (e.g., from a power socket or a battery).  Common types of e-waste include the following:

q Infocomm technology (ICT) equipment, such as desktop, laptop and tablet computers, mobile phones, computer and mobile phone batteries, printers, peripherals and accessories such as keyboards, modems, monitors, computer mice, docking stations, hard disk drives, battery chargers, etc.

q Home appliances, such as TVs, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, rice cookers, microwave and toaster ovens, electric kettles, food processors and blenders, electric fans, DVD/video/music players, radios, hi-fis, vacuum cleaners, etc.

q Other types of e-waste include lamps and lighting devices, batteries, electronic toys, sports and leisure equipment, etc.

E-waste is mostly made up of metal and plastic components, but also contains small amounts of heavy metals and substances of concern (e.g., in printed circuit boards).  The wide variety of e-waste makes it hard to generalise the material content – for example, fridges and air conditioners in particular contain refrigerants to enable cooling to take place, but these refrigerants may also contribute to ozone layer depletion or climate change; the material composition of a mobile phone is very different from that of an electric kettle.

A study released in 2018 by Singapore’s National Environment Agency found that the country produces 60,000 metric tons of electrical and electronic waste every year.  About 60 percent of Singapore residents do not know or are unsure of how to recycle their e-waste.

Format

Your report should be a document that aims to convince a venture capitalist to invest in your idea.  As this is not the typical academic report (venture capitalists are not interested in reading the usual academic term paper!), the “Introduction → Literature Review → Methodology → Results and Discussion → Conclusions” need not be followed.  In your groups, discuss what format this document should take.

To put together a compelling case, you may think of incorporating video or audio.  If you decide to include videos in your report, the best tool to use is Adobe InDesign as it allows good control over the placement of the video.  Convince a venture capitalist how your data product will help users manage their expenditure, and why people would want to use your data product.

Preliminary Work

1. View the following videos:

a. this video to understand food waste; or

b. this video to understand e-waste.

2. Understand why food/e-waste is a problem

a. this podcast explains the different problems food waste creates

b. this article explains the dangers of improperly disposed e-waste

3. Understand that there are categories of food/e-waste

a. avoidable vs unavoidable food waste (article)

b. regulated vs unregulated e-waste (article)

4. Read the articles in Annex A to understand the extent and impact of food/e-waste in Singapore as well as around the world.

5. Retrieve articles on food/e-waste from the Nexis Uni database (http://www.ntu.edu.sg/library/).

6. Read What is Data Science? by Mike Loukides (2010) to understand what a data product is.

7. Read How Venture Capital Works by Bob Zider (1998) to understand who a venture capitalist is, and how venture capital works.

8. Think about the structure of a document that a venture capitalist would be attracted to read.  This is a person who manages a lot of money, and who is constantly sent all sorts of ideas clamoring for his attention/interest/backing/money.  He will spend only a short time on each document (he’s got to get back to monitoring his investments).  What sort of report will attract him enough to take a second, third, fourth look, and to ultimately fund your data product?