Data Analytics in Accounting: Visualizing Corporate Income Inequality

Abstract

Accounting courses increasingly require students to learn data analytics skills and extract insights from business data. The issue of corporate income inequality (the growing gap between the most- and least-profitable companies) has become relevant in discussions of global economic issues. This project has students use data analytic software tools to gain insight into corporate income inequality by extracting and analyzing accounting data. Students learn to clean, merge, and manipulate financial statement data sets to identify corporate income inequality through visualizations. Students' responses to the post-project questionnaire show that the project provided a positive learning experience and increased their academic performance.