jpy VS kaggle-environments

Deephaven has huge range. It is much more than a classic "tick database". At its core, Deephaven is a Java application... and the team has evolved a Python-Java bridge (https://github.com/bcdev/jpy) so most people now use it as a Python-first experience. Apps and analytics are easy to write... as one combines Python (or Java/Groovy) with table operations and other Deephaven-Table-API capabilities... setting up a logical tree where data flows from one node to the next. This style of linear and iterative data-driven (imperative) development is powerful.

If you absolutely need to use a Python and not Java library, I would recommend trying something like either Jython which runs on any JVM or switching entirely to GraalVM. You can also try using bindings for CPython to Java like Jep or jpy which use the standard CPython interpreter .

If you are interested in Data Science, you may want to look at Kaggle competitions. https://www.kaggle.com/competitions

Secondly, if you feel like you do not have enough skills or a lack of practice answering problem statements, there are a lot of good websites where you can find interesting projects. I would recommend starting participating in some Kaggle competitions or download some free Google datasets and start playing with them.

For reference: Kaggle is a Google product. You can see the list of current competitions here.

You could try Kaggle competitions, or participating in forecasting markets (as you stated) is another option. You don't need any specific skill set to be a forecaster, the rules of the bet are stipulated and from there it's just based on your ability to predict the outcome. You could also try your hand at investing in the stock market, or try and make money betting on sports games. If you're very good at this stuff I'm sure you can make a lot of money doing it. The thing to keep in mind is that generally video games are much much easier than real life

As to the specifics of your projects, that's up to you. Try browsing Kaggle; check out some of the work we have on The Pudding; check out some journalism examples to see what you can try to build on or improve.

You might want to look at kaggle competitions.