The Effini Great British Bake-athon

Team Musings

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This week sees the start of some interesting activities at Effini! Chris Wilson, our Head of Engineering, tells us more.

Data is what we do; we love how it can help our clients improve their businesses, and all the different activities it can help us with. And we also love the Great British Bake Off (GBBO)! Many of the Effini team bake on a regular basis ( these delicious Cinnamon buns are courtesy of Karen, one of our Data Scientists) and we show off our wares to each other on our dedicated Slack channel. We also religiously follow the TV show and share our opinions during the week in our casual off-topic chats.

So it felt natural that one day it came to pass that we had the idea to bring the two together – data and GBBO!

I think the question that started it all was “How many times does Prue say the words ‘the flavour is good’?”, which was inevitably followed by “How many times does Paul give a handshake?”.

Once our data curiosity is piqued there’s no stopping us. A working group was formed to see what insights we could get out of all the data that is out there on the internet related to the Great British Bake Off.

Other people have done Data Analysis around the show before, in an even more in-depth manner than what we’re planning here. Our desire to learn new skills and broaden our knowledge also runs strong at Effini. As well as being fun, we all see this as an opportunity for the Data Engineers amongst us to learn some Data Science skills, and the Data Scientists to learn some Data Engineering skills!

There’s so much that can be measured in everyday activities, and we’re already thinking of some different areas we may look at. What are the patterns hiding inside the ingredients – can we spot the trends, maybe even predict what’s going to be the fashionable ingredient in a future series? The subtitles may help us identify those famous phrases, and see when they’re most likely to be used. Or maybe the social media around the show will highlight something interesting.

Stay tuned for future posts – next time we’ll concentrate on how the Data Discovery process starts. This isn’t actually looking at the data itself. The important thing is “What questions are we trying to answer?”

Have you got any burning questions you want answered about the Great British Bake Off?

See you next time!