{"id":1435,"date":"2022-01-29T02:19:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-29T02:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/?p=1435"},"modified":"2022-08-10T14:28:57","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T14:28:57","slug":"data-science-for-the-world-inspires-future-data-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/data-science-for-the-world-inspires-future-data-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"“Data Science for the World” Inspires Future Data Scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"

The volume of data collected today is growing astronomically as our computers, phones, and smart devices track our every move, purchase, and desire. Yet, the number of people who can sift through this data to find useful information remains a meager percentage of the workforce.\"YelenaThe need for more data analysts and data scientists is simply outpacing the supply. So colleges and universities need to help close the widening knowledge gap. This is the crux of an upcoming article in the IEEE Computer Journal (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ) written by University of Miami Computer Science Professors Yelena Yesha<\/strong><\/a>, and Mitsunori Ogihara<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and graduate student Jerry Bonnell<\/strong> (pictured together below).<\/p>\n

It was also the impetus for the Master of Science in Data Science<\/a> program, now offered through the Graduate School<\/a>. And it is why Ogihara and Bonnell designed and piloted an undergraduate class this fall called \u201cData Science for the World,\u201d for students interested in the field. It will also be offered next fall, they said. \u201cMany disciplines today including science, medicine, social sciences, and even the humanities use data for discoveries or the exploration of ideas,\u201d Ogihara said. \u201cSo a student of any reasonable undergraduate program today should have some exposure to data science.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jerry<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want all the students at the University to have more of a data science education and to be more data-aware”<\/h3>\n

Nick Tsinoremas<\/strong><\/a>, \"NicholasFounding Director of the Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC), and the University\u2019s Vice Provost for Research Computing and Data agreed. \u201cWe want all the students at the University to have more of a data science education and to be more data-aware because this is our future,\u201d he said. \u201cTo make decisions in general today, one needs to be data-aware, so this course is part of our effort as a University to expose our undergraduates to data science.\u201d<\/p>\n

It comes at a time when many colleges and universities around the country are trying to educate students in the language of data. However, unlike other Data Science 101 classes, Ogihara and Bonnell tailored theirs so that students with little to no knowledge of statistics or computer programming could still benefit from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to make it accessible, so we don\u2019t assume that students have a background in math, programming, or statistics,\u201d said Ogihara. The two even wrote an online textbook<\/a> for the course, which opens with a list of real-world examples of data science in practice: like the fact that monitoring patient data can help doctors more accurately diagnose diseases, and tracking social media posts can help data scientists explain a shift in public opinion.<\/p>\n

The online resource is now being edited for publication, and is unique because the textbook uses the favored programming language of many statisticians, R. Ogihara and Bonnell chose to use R because it is attuned to statistical analysis and, by incorporating an increasingly popular collection of tools in R called tidyverse<\/a>, students can easily learn how to process, wrangle, transform, and model data on their own too.<\/p>\n

\"tidyverse\"<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the beginning to the end of the course, students were touching real data with their assignments,\u201d Bonnell said. \u201cSo they could always see the big picture and knew they were doing something important.\u201d For example, the class\u2019 20 students looked into the 2018 accusation that the New England Patriots deflated footballs during the game because it was easier for quarterback Tom Brady to catch and throw them in the cold. They tested whether the average ball pressure drop was due to randomness, and concluded it was plausible that the pressure drops observed were due to a reason other than chance.<\/p>\n

\"EdwardThat was one of freshman Eddie Hanlon\u2019s<\/strong> favorite assignments. But he also enjoyed testing whether murder rates are affected by a state\u2019s policy on the death penalty, another assignment they did in the class. \u201cWe were able to conclude that when the death penalty is enforced, murder rates go down,\u201d said Hanlon, a finance major with a minor in computer science. Hanlon said he has always been interested in numbers, but the course helped him learn some computer programming that can further his analysis. It also taught him some new statistical strategies. \u201cI had never done any programming, and had zero experience with the software R,\u201d he said. \u201cBut by the end of the semester, I felt pretty proficient in R.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Data science is extremely applicable
\nin so many different fields.
\nI definitely see it as a career possibility”<\/h3>\n

He was so empowered by the course that Hanlon spent part of his winter break learning another programming language, called Python, which is also used widely by data scientists. \u201cI wasn\u2019t initially interested in data science\u2014I just didn\u2019t know enough about the field\u2014but I am now. Data science is extremely applicable in so many different fields. I definitely see it as a career possibility,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"CarolineSenior math major Caroline Hall<\/strong> took the course because she wanted to learn how to use R better for future job opportunities. She had already learned the programming language Java, but the data science class helped Hall feel so comfortable with R, it allowed her to learn two other tools since then\u2014SQL and Tableau, which help transform and visualize datasets. \u201cI feel confident now in being able to transform datasets, which means to organize the data and extract the most useful information from it,\u201d said Hall, who also has minors in computer science and psychology. It also piqued her interest in a career in data science. \u201cI want to start off as a data analyst, but I know we work with data scientists, so I may want to transition into that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SOURCE: NEWS@TheU Story by Janette Neuwahl Tannen<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The volume of data collected today is growing astronomically as our computers, phones, and smart devices track our every move, purchase, and desire. Yet, the number of people who can sift through this data to find useful information remains a meager percentage of the workforce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1414,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[171,506],"tags":[542,540,541,537,539,226,152,75,543,544,538,545,69],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1435"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1449,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions\/1449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}