Welcome to the Masha and Panda Mystery Series - where real accounting challenges become engaging detective stories that teach you practical data analytics skills.

Meet the Characters

Masha - The sharp-eyed analyst who gets frustrated with manual work but always spots the patterns. She represents your inner voice wanting efficiency and automation.

Panda - The wise technical guide who offers different perspectives and gentle guidance. He helps you see problems from new angles without intimidation.

The Mysteries

Mystery 001: The Case of the Disappearing Dollars

Beginner | 15 minutes | Rounding Errors
Sarah discovers a 17-cent discrepancy between systems and learns how different rounding methods create legitimate differences.

Mystery 002: The Case of the Strange Negative Balances

Beginner | 10 minutes | Legacy Systems
When the legacy system exports negative numbers as “5,009-“ and “1,200CR”, Sarah must decode these ancient formats.

Mystery 003: The Case of the Time-Traveling Addresses

Intermediate | 15 minutes | Historical Data
The audit team needs customer addresses “as of December 31st” but the database has years of address changes.

Mystery 004: The Case of the Vanishing Data

Beginner | 8 minutes | Data Quality
The monthly report totals do not match, and somewhere in thousands of rows, invisible missing values are causing chaos.

Mystery 005: The Case of the Buried Treasure

Intermediate | 12 minutes | Text Extraction
Insurance claims hide dollar amounts in narrative text, and Sarah needs to extract every “$2,500” and “$800” from paragraphs of descriptions.

Mystery 006: The Case of the Closest Match

Advanced | 18 minutes | Complex Merging
Portfolio valuation requires matching purchase dates with price history, but exact date matches do not exist.

How It Works

Each mystery follows the same engaging format:

  1. The Case - A real accounting scenario that sets up the problem
  2. Investigation - Follow the detective work with Masha and Panda commentary
  3. The Solution - Complete code walkthrough showing how to solve the problem
  4. Key Learning Points - Data analytics concepts and techniques you can apply immediately

All mysteries are based on real accounting scenarios. You will learn practical data transformation and analysis techniques through engaging storytelling, with Python/pandas implementations showing one way to solve each challenge.

New mysteries are added regularly. Check back often for more accounting adventures.