I am from France, and a bit of a history buff. I was reading an umpteenth book about the Wars of the Roses (1399-1483) when it dawned on me that an awful number of English queens in the Middle Ages were anything but. In their vast majority, they had left their home coountry at a young age to marry an English monarch and represent that kingdom for the rest of their lives. I wanted to learn more about their birthplaces.
-- a larger-than-expected number of English women (10) becoming consorts -- but confirmation that, in terms of total tenure, they were dwarfed by non-English consorts
-- Wikipedia, two different pages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_royal_consorts and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_royal_consorts)
-- Personal research to collect birthplace info when not provided by Wikipedia
-- Data cleanup: appending several tables; bringing consistency to tables; simplifying entries; removing unnecessary columns. Tool: python.
-- Data analysis: Grouping and averaging.
-- Visualization: Used plotly, matplotlib, seaborn to explore options. Datawrapper for quick bar charts.
I had to be patient with the process and at the same time decide to ditch unproductive dataset to pick up this topic on the fly. I learned to form clear questions to get the right kind of help from TAs.
-- I would have wanted to produce more sophisticated charts showing the composition of the consorts list every time a new spouse came in the picture. I intend to find a solution.
-- I would like to get comments from actual historians about royal marriages and receive input on more interesting angles to explore.