Every year, the World Bank Group lends billions of dollars to fund infrastructure and other development projects around the globe. Projects vary widely in scale and scope, ranging from developing hydropower systems to rehabilitating coral reefs to improving roads, health, education and agriculture systems. Contractors on these projects are typically hired through a competitive bidding [...]
To most people, Memphis, Tennessee evokes images of Elvis, Beale Street, and BBQ. But like many American cities, Memphis also faces a legacy of urban planning dominated by suburban growth and automobile transportation. Since 1970, the City of Memphis’s population has grown by 4 percent while the geographic area has increased by 55 percent, leaving [...]
Earmarks have been called “the best known, most notorious, and most misunderstood aspect of the congressional budgetary process.” These government budget items allocated to specific people, places, or projects are alternately described as a subversion of democracy or an important negotiation tool to smooth the passage of controversial legislation. But despite the attention earmarks attract, [...]
It's hard to believe we're already a third of the way through the summer. During a foggy week where Chicago did its best impression of San Francisco, the DSSG fellows started to transition from exploring and cleaning their data to conducting deeper analyses and constructing new tools to attack their partners' problems. Visits from Abhi [...]
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, [...]
