In 2005, Florida implemented a new "Stand Your Ground" law, which legally protected the use of deadly force in self-defense. The law, which removes the "duty to retreat" when a person is threatened with serious bodily harm, gained national attention after George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin in 2012. Soon after its passage in Florida, [...]
Reducing infant mortality, improving graduation rates for high school and first-generation college students, preventing home abandonment, and identifying legislative plagiarism are just some of the project goals for the 2015 Eric & Wendy Schmidt Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship. For fourteen weeks, 42 fellows in Chicago will work with nonprofit and government partners [...]
Every year, the National Day of Civic Hacking unites people across the country for hackathons, meetups, and other events centered around a common goal: using technology to improve communities and government. This year, Chicago celebrated National Day at the Civic Opera House with a hackathon-style Urban Sustainability Apps Competition organized by the Center for Neighborhood [...]
Data Science for Social Good is organized around projects, fixed-length efforts designed to produce a practical solution or product at the end of the summer. For many academics, used to open-ended research that typically makes it mark incrementally or over the long term, this more focused approach can be a jarring shift. But many DSSG [...]
From the beginning, education has been one of the primary focus areas of Data Science for Social Good. In 2013, we helped Mesa Public Schools detect and address “under-matching,” when a graduating student applies to colleges below their qualifications. Last year, we worked with Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, improving the performance of their [...]
Building a data science for social good community means welcoming in people from all stages of their education and career. Training undergraduates and grad students at the onset of their life in the workforce offers valuable preparation for their first jobs after school, whether those lie in the non-profit, public, or tech sectors. But it’s [...]
Data science is an increasingly global pursuit. During the first two years of Data Science for Social Good, we’ve welcomed fellows from Canada, Mexico, Israel, Australia, Colombia, Germany, Brazil, Italy, India, and China, and received applications from dozens of additional nations. This year’s program is no less international with Mexico, Argentina, Austria, Brazil, India, Germany, [...]
Data can make a difference in the world. With the right people, tools, and partnerships, non-profits and governments can use data to save lives, educate more children, reduce poverty and protect the Earth. But to realize this great potential means building a community that fuses a broad range of research disciplines, backgrounds, and talents to [...]
Import is a new series of guest posts from friends, colleagues, and collaborators in the data science for social good community. This post is by Ben Wellington, who writes the open data blog I Quant NY Every year, New York City public schools conduct an in-depth survey of their parents, students and teachers. According to [...]
Fellow applications just closed for the 2015 Summer Fellowship and we were excited to see almost 800 people apply! As we review these (inspiring) applications and make (extremely difficult) decisions, we'll spend the next few blog posts talking about who applied: Where did they come from? What backgrounds do they have? What are they studying? [...]