One Day Data Science Portfolio Ideas: Beginner Friendly Open Source Contributions

An entry in the “One Day Data Science Portfolio Ideas” series

Many of the ideas I am sharing in this “One Day Data Science Portfolio Ideas” series come from the book I wrote in 2021–2022 and then published in April of 2023. In a way, this series is a bit of a one year anniversary celebration of that book’s publication.

In that book I wrote about open source projects:

Searching for a contribution you can make, and then implementing that contribution… makes for an impressive distributed portfolio entry.

Scientists and developers contributing to open source projects. Image credit: Dall-E.

Data Science Portfolio Inspiration

If you spend some time browsing the GitHub repository for one of data science’s most used Python libraries, Pandas, you’ll see the message:

“All contributions, bug reports, bug fixes, documentation improvements, enhancements, and ideas are welcome.” (Pandas GitHub)

But that is not all! In late-night television-style Pandas also offers a contribution guide. If you plan to pursue this method of adding to or enhancing your data science professional portfolio — please-please-please…