Data Science for Social Good at UW eScience
Data Science for Social Good at UW eScience
Follow along at http://arokem.github.io/2015-10-20-DSSG/
Two major problems:
How do we enable data-driven approaches in institutions devoted to social good?
How can we provide training for data-scientists interested in social good?
Our solution
A ten-week internship program matching student DSSG fellows with project leads from organizations in the Seattle region devoted to social good, for intense joint work focused on providing a specific data-driven solution.
#DSSG2015 @uwescience
Context/Inspiration
Incubator projects
Our recipe
4 projects (with project leads)
of 11 applications
17 DSSG Fellows
of 144 applications
6 High School students (ALVA program)
The eScience infrastructure
- eScience Data Scientist Mentors
- Speakers from around UW/Seattle
- Ethnographer
- Program managers
- Data science studio
Training in data science:
The projects
Assessing Community Well-being through Open Data
Socrata crime incidence data
Survey data
Data from social networks (facebook, twitter, etc.)
Rerouting Solutions for King County Paratransit
Open Sidewalks: route maps for low-mobility citizens
Predictors of Permanent Housing for Homeless Families
A few lessons we learned
It is possible to both:
Do interesting things with data, with social good implications Provide highly effective training- Trainee diversity poses a challenge in formal settings
- But might be a strength in the context of project work!
Stakeholder involvement is important (no projects "thrown over the fence")
In-house expertise (data scientists, program managers) are an important asset
But (hypothesis) DSSG can be translated into other settings