"2-car acc @ State & Lake, both drivers injred" That short, hastily typed text message or tweet contains a lot of information that police, emergency responders, news organizations and drivers could use. A human observer could quickly identify that it refers to an auto accident, a medical emergency, and a street intersection in Chicago. But [...]
Boarded up buildings and overgrown lots have plagued Chicago's low-income neighborhoods for decades. Over the past five years, however, vacant and abandoned properties have spread beyond the inner city and into the suburbs, disrupting formerly stable working and middle class communities and prompting the creation of a county-wide land bank, a new tool for fighting [...]
I cringe a little at the term data science. It conveys all the hype and false-promise you'd expect of an occupation recently described as the "sexiest job of the 21st century". It's all-encompassing, yet it manages to describe little in its vagueness. The ambiguity of its definition will probably resolve itself in time. But the [...]
Last week's Techweek Chicago event had all the trappings of your typical tech conference. Sprawled out over a floor of the city's massive Merchandise Mart was a maze of exhibitor booths luring attendees to learn about their new dating service or augmented reality app with tchotchkes and loud music. Three stages offered a full slate [...]
The first few weeks of the fellowship focused on defining our problems -- talking to our partners, understanding their problems and data , brainstorming technical strategies, and scoping out proposed solutions. But alongside defining our problems, we have also been redefining what a problem is. Data Science for Social Good fellows come from a wide [...]
Data science isn't just about creating algorithms, writing code, or visualizing data. The first step is finding the right problem to solve. Many of the governments and nonprofit organizations we've talked to are excited about using data to make better decisions. But most aren't quite sure where to start, while others pitch lots of problems [...]
We spent much of the first week of the fellowship getting fellows up to speed on git, python, R, and other data science tools. The idea was to give everyone a shared sense of what's out there so they can collaborate and teach other over the summer. We've invited a few of our fellows to [...]
The Data Science for Social Good fellowship is just getting started. Fellow Skyler Whorton wrote a blog post reflecting on week one of the program. We've brought thirty six fellows with diverse backgrounds and perspectives to Chicago. So let's hear from a few more voices about how things are going so far. For our first [...]
Imagine you are asked to compare patient outcomes at area hospitals. In minutes, you can pull the Medicare data for 30-day mortality rates after a heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia, and start crunching numbers. But say Hospital A is in a low-income neighborhood with high rates of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other chronic conditions. [...]
In Mexico, drug cartels are locked in violent rivalries that profoundly affect the entire country and its population. The history of this ongoing struggle is complex and steeped in political controversy, but some believe that careful analysis of the past may help the Mexican government curb the violence. This was the guiding maxim for Andrea [...]
