Chris Zuppa Visuals

About this Project: Investment apps’ low fees and minimum investment requirements have made investing in the stock market easier for many Americans. The Penny Hoarder conducted a national representative survey about investment apps to better understand the growing trend. Key themes explored included:

• Would investors be willing to take advice from a robo advisor?
• How much do Americans rely on social media to consume financial advice?
• Do celebrities sway opinion on cryptocurrency?

I collaborated with Ken Lyons, Director of Visuals, on developing graphics and data visualizations for the stories. I also collaborated with the managing editor, senior editor and reporting team on the data analysis.

Role: Survey development, survey analysis, graphics research, data visualization, image research and graphic design

Survey Analysis: I cleaned the data, compared weighted survey results with unweighted survey results and conducted chi-square tests to test for correlationship between variables. I also wrote the survey methodology and was responsible for organizing the data for writers to report on.

Tools: R Studio, Google Sheets, Infogram, Adobe Illustrator, and Infogram

R Packages: QuestionR, Spatstat, Dplyer and Tidyverse

Key Result: The Penny Hoarder published three stories:

• An overall story summarizing the survey’s results
• A story reporting on the influence celebrity’s have on people decision to invest in cryptocurrency
• A story about how to invest in stocks that cost less than $5