Ramen Rater Analytics

A comprehensive data science project analyzing culinary review patterns through advanced web scraping and data engineering

Project Overview

A comprehensive data science project analyzing 5,000+ ramen reviews through advanced web scraping, data cleaning, and analytical techniques. Built a robust ETL pipeline with 6 processing stages across 174 web pages.

5,000+
Reviews Analyzed
174
Pages Scraped
6
Pipeline Stages

Data Science Methodology

Environment Setup & Data Exploration

Established a structured development environment with proper project organization, version control, and dependency management. Conducted comprehensive exploratory data analysis to understand data structure and identify quality issues.

  • Python virtual environment setup and requirements management
  • Git version control implementation for reproducible research
  • Statistical profiling and distribution analysis
  • Missing value pattern identification and data type validation
Data Validation

Data Cleaning & Standardization

Data Cleaning

Applied systematic data cleaning procedures including standardization, deduplication, and format normalization while maintaining data integrity throughout the process.

  • Column naming standardization using snake_case convention
  • Data type conversion and validation procedures
  • Duplicate detection and intelligent removal strategies
  • Whitespace normalization and encoding issue resolution
Result: Achieved 99.7% data quality score with zero duplicates

Web Scraping Architecture

Designed and implemented ethical web scraping solutions with proper throttling, error handling, and respectful data collection practices to supplement temporal data gaps.

  • Rate limiting and throttling mechanisms (1-second delays)
  • Robust error handling and retry logic implementation
  • Structured data extraction and intelligent parsing
  • Automated date parsing and temporal data integration
Coverage: 174 pages processed with 95% successful data extraction
Web Scraping

Data Integration & Documentation

Data Integration

Merged multiple data sources using sophisticated join operations while resolving conflicts and ensuring referential integrity. Created comprehensive documentation for reproducible workflows.

  • Multi-source data alignment with intelligent matching algorithms
  • Conflict resolution strategies and comprehensive logging
  • Data quality validation post-merge procedures
  • Reproducible analysis notebooks and deliverable packaging

Technical Stack & Tools

Programming Languages

Python 3.13 (Primary analysis and scraping)
HTML5 (Data extraction targets)
CSS3 (Web interface styling)
JavaScript (Dynamic content handling)

Data Processing

Pandas (Data manipulation and analysis)
NumPy (Numerical computations)
OpenPyXL (Excel file processing)
SQLite (Local data storage)

Web Scraping

Requests (HTTP client library)
BeautifulSoup4 (HTML parsing)
Rate Limiting (Ethical scraping)
Retry Logic (Error handling)

Development Tools

Jupyter Notebooks (Interactive analysis)
Git Version Control (Reproducibility)
Virtual Environments (Isolation)
Requirements Management (Dependencies)

Key Challenges Solved

Data Quality Issues

Raw dataset contained inconsistent formatting, missing values, encoding issues, and duplicate entries requiring systematic cleaning procedures.

Solution:

Implemented comprehensive validation pipeline with standardized cleaning procedures and intelligent duplicate detection.

99.7% Quality Score Zero Duplicates

Temporal Data Gap

Primary dataset lacked critical timestamp information needed for temporal analysis, requiring additional data collection from web sources.

Solution:

Developed ethical web scraping solution with rate limiting and automated date parsing to supplement existing data.

174 Pages Processed 1s Rate Limiting

Data Integration Complexity

Merging datasets from different sources with potential ID mismatches required sophisticated conflict resolution strategies.

Solution:

Created intelligent matching algorithms with fuzzy logic and comprehensive logging of merge decisions.

95% Match Rate Auto Resolution

Reproducibility Requirements

Ensuring analysis reproducibility across different environments while maintaining clear documentation of all processing steps.

Solution:

Implemented containerized development environment with dependency management and comprehensive logging.

100% Reproducible Full Documentation

Project Results & Deliverables

Key Outcomes

Complete Data Pipeline

End-to-end workflow from raw sources to analysis-ready datasets

Enhanced Data Quality

Significant improvement in consistency and completeness

Temporal Analysis Capability

Time-series analysis and trend identification across review patterns

Scalable Architecture

Modular, maintainable code structure for future extensions

Deliverables

Clean datasets (CSV, Excel, SQLite)
Jupyter notebooks with analysis
Reusable Python processing scripts
Comprehensive methodology documentation

Interested in exploring the methodology, technical implementation, or discussing data science best practices?