The time for introductions is over at Data Science for Social Good. Joined at the start of the week by a smattering of late-arriving fellows, the project teams are now at full strength, and they spent the week narrowing down the specific goals for their work this summer. By the end of the week, project [...]
Republished from DSSG fellow Carl Shan's blog, where is he recapping the summer week-by-week. One of the non-profit partners my team is working with came in to the office this past week. They shared with us the overarching problem they’re facing as an organization, and how they hoped our team can shed some light onto [...]
It was a busy week of working with and learning from our project partners, in person at the DSSG space on State Street, on video chats, and in conference calls. Fellows heard how a diverse range of organizations -- point-of-sale data analysts, non-profits working on homelessness and health insurance, government agencies covering education and public [...]
In the second week of the fellowship, fellows and mentors have heard from a wide range of our project partners for the summer, learning from the experts about the problems they will soon tackle. Between talks,they've started working with the data and brainstorming ideas about what they hope to reveal and build to meet the [...]
As a young, rapidly-growing, and broad field, data science has a language problem. A self-described data scientist may prefer to program in Python, R, or Stata. They use cloud computing resources, relational databases, or MapReduce. For visualizations, they may be experienced in Tableau, the ggplot2 library, or GIS mapping software. Data scientists may be skilled [...]
"Data science is not a real field, it's just statistics done by people with weird hair." You might not expect a fellowship called Data Science for Social Good to begin their summer with a debate over the legitimacy of data science. But before the fellows even had a chance to introduce themselves to the group, [...]
This year, we’ve expanded our fellow slots by a dozen, from 36 to 48. The fellows come from universities throughout North America, from McGill University in Montreal to Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México in Mexico City, and from schools in Australia, Denmark, and England as well. They study computer science, statistics, psychiatry, engineering, public policy, [...]
The Data Science for Social Good mentors are the core of the fellowship. As experienced data scientists from industry and academia, the mentors bring both technical knowledge and real-world experience to the program. They’re helpful guides for the fellows and their projects, and liaisons for the partner organizations. Finding the right people with both technical [...]
Last year, it was just an idea: Bring three dozen students to Chicago and prepare them for a career using data to make the world a better place. But when the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Data Science for Social Good Fellowship was announced in March, it struck a nerve. In less than a month, we [...]
Street lights are one of many public services that residents take for granted. In addition to helping us avoid car crashes, alley and street lights allow us to be aware of our surroundings and can help prevent devastating crimes like theft and assault. But while residents don’t typically notice street lights until they stop working, [...]
