Market Data Report

Take a slice of real, published market data from a virtual economy and produce a short report identifying its faucets, its sinks, and one place the two are out of balance.

Due: 15 March 2027 · Weight: 15%

The brief#

Read a real economy’s numbers the way its designers have to, and say what they mean.

You’ll work from a real, publicly published data source on a virtual economy — most likely EVE Online’s Monthly Economic Reports, which is what Week 4’s lecture and deck cover in depth, though you may substitute another published source with the convenor’s agreement. The vocabulary this report actually asks you to apply — faucets, sinks, and where they’re out of balance — is Week 2’s, not Week 3’s: Market Data Lab gave you practice spotting a different kind of mismatch (a traded price diverging from its listed guide price), a related but distinct skill worth keeping separate in your head from the faucet/sink imbalance this report is actually marked on.

A strong report doesn’t just describe the data — it identifies the mechanisms producing it. Two numbers moving together is an observation. Naming the faucet creating currency and the sink removing it, and pointing at where they’re mismatched, is analysis.

What you submit#

A short written report (roughly 800–1200 words, or equivalent in figures-plus-commentary) that:

• names at least two faucets and two sinks visible in your chosen data source, with a citation to where in the source you found them
• identifies one specific point of imbalance — a trend, a spike, a divergence — and explains what it suggests about the economy’s health
• is written for a reader who has not opened the source themselves

Cite your data source by name and link. If you use EVE Online’s Monthly Economic Reports, the report hub is here.