CSUCI Datathon

This Saturday, I attended CSUCI’s first-ever Datathon, an event to explore data science and its applications in real world business, healthcare, and research.

Morning + Introductions

Once I was on campus, I followed the signs they put around and arrived at Del Norte hall. I checked in and they handed me a tote bag of resources and swag. Then, I talked with the woman working behind the table. Her name was Jasmine Wright, a senior at CSUCI majoring in Applied Mathmatics. She shared she was lookng into taking a gap year, and then getting her PhD. From there, she intended on working with marine biologists to study and research with them, in the field/as a data scientist.


After that, I went inside the lecture hall and sat behind someone, and overheard them say they were going to Moorpark College. I jumped in since, I too, am going to Moorpark College in the fall as a freshman. I met Wylan Brown, an incoming chemistry major, as well as their brother, Andor Brown.

After talking to Wylan about books and whatnot for a bit, the introductions presentation began, led by Alona Kryshchenko and Isaac Noe Quintanilla-Salinas, Data Science and Mathmatics professors at CSUCI. Once we ran down what Data Science is, the schedule, and other items on the list, we went to the Computer Labs.

RStudio Lesson

At the computer labs, we followed a tutorial on how to program with RStudio (app) and ggplot (library) using a data set about cars and their mpg (miles per gallon) as well as their other stats.






There were some very helpful instructors walking around answering all our questions. At one point, they kept one instructor close to my station because I often asked for more detail, or about a potential error in the directions, or for clarification, haha.


Well Priya, what did you learn?
I’m glad you asked! A lot. Although I’d like to detail everything, I’ll save that for my YouTube and tutorials I’ll make later.

However, once I finished, I made a summary of everything I had learned in R Studio with comments, so I’ll insert some pictures of all of that here:



note: this was made in a RStudio Script, but the screenshots are from microsoft notepad :)

Lunch

free food!

Lunch was free and provided. Wylan and I sat and ate together, and then we went to say hi to their brother. At their table was a couple, so I talked to them for a short while. Both of them used to go to art school, interestingly enough. Now, they are in much different careers, with one working in business and one working in data science. They both shared their individual experiences with such a career transition, and as well as what exactly they currently do. Check them out on Linkedin, Lu (Lydia) Timlin-Broussard and Christopher Timlin-Broussard, they were both such a delight to meet. :)

We talked with Andor shortly, before reconvening to the lecture hall to prepare for the competition.

Competition

There was two levels; beginning and advanced. I was competiting at the beginning level since this was my first time doing most of this. We were to form teams, which ended up being 4-5 people each.

The competiton required us to analyze data about the Channel Island Foxes, either their weight or reproductive status, create data visualizations, and then present about our findings. We had an hour to make the presentation, and 5 minutes to present.

My team consisted of Wylan, Andor, and a girl named Tracy Li I pulled over to join us as well. (Unfortunately none of them have a linkedin for me to link).

Tracy is an incoming freshman at UCI as a data science major, and currently a high school senior.

Wylan left to deal with a migrane for a short while, and Andor was having trouble loading the code in, so for the first half hour, Tracy and I made data visualizations with R Studio and made the presentation.



The second half, Wylan was back and the three of us were making corrections to any of the visualizations as needed. For one, we altered the weight-vaccinations slide to be faceted by gender, since female foxes tend to be smaller. I left for the restroom after we submitted and when I returned, we had one last thing we wanted to do.

On our third or fourth slide, the y-axis (body condition) was organized alphabetically rather than by quantity (the x-axis was by weight) so we had to factor/level the y-axis by weight right as we submitted at the end of the hour.

Then we presented! You can see a link to it here. Our team was the Virtual Vulpines, deemed by Wylan because Vulpines is a word for fox, and virtual since this is a technology-based event. :)

Panelists

After that, we went back to the lecture hall to listen to the advice of the panelists!

The panelists:

Nausheen Ahmed - Executive Director, Supply Chain Operational Excellence for Cedars-Sinai Health System

Gregory Devogel - Chief Technical Officer at the Naval Seas Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division

Matt Dawson - Staff Data Scientist at Google

Matthew Zivot - Chief Data Officer & Director of Institutional Research at CSUCI

Michael Ludkovski - Prof. Dept. of Stats * Applied Probability (PSTAT) Co-Director, Center for Fnancial Mathmatics & Actuarial Research, Lead for the Sourthern California Consortium for Data Science (CA Learning Lab Data Science Grand Challenge Pathways Track)

Let’s go over the highlights from the questions!

Tell us about the jobs in your field in the data science.

Ahmed: She has analysts report to her, but they are constantly doing something different every day, and there's a wide range of tools they use. "You can have problems in the clinical sites, which will require a lot of data cleanup and interpretation. We can have large moding and logistics problems, which will be caring theory and other mathematical processes. Then we have forecasting which uses AI neural net and other forecasting techniques." She furthered shared the data extraction, model development and financial aspects of data analysts jobs as well.

Zivot: he shared how he "gets bored doing the same thing every day" and that day-to-day life for data science is not consistent or the same. "We try to help the universiy how well it's functioning." He says this line of working is asking the right questions as well as having people skills. He shared a lot of the work is producing data visualizations that answers the questions they see the university is trying to answer.

Dawson: "I might be spending a lot of money on Google ads, how can we tell them that it's worth it?" He also states the work varys day-to-day.

Takaways: Data scientists have different work each day, a lot of the job is convicing the business what is and isn’t profitable

What have you learned in your job and in life?

Devogel: "A lot of people as a superficial wuestions, and we call it the five Whys... So you have to go a few times asking why and you'll find out the question they're asking isn't what they really want... Almost every rule has a way to waive it or a way to get around it (legally)." Zivot and Ahmed agreed with the "people never ask the question" lesson. Zivot added it is important to have people that give you honest feedback.

Dawson: "There is no finish line in data science, there's always more to learn" (paraphrased).

Takeaways: Ask the five whys, get to the core of the questions people ask you

Advice

Ludkovski: Make use of grassroots communities for grow

Ahmeed: Leave your comfort zone, take on projects, "when you put yourself in situations wich may be a little beyond what you've done before, you're only gonna grow."

Awards

At the very end was the awards ceremony, where our team in the Beginners division got the “Best Interpretation” Award.



it was such an honor to attend and compete with this wonderful team :))

Networking

I talked to Matt Dawson after for a short while about his journey, as well as his advice. Similar to me, he lives in TO, went to Moorpark College, and transferred to CSUCI (I intend on transferring elsewhere, but similar path). Along the way, he built projects, in his field, but about things he enjoyed. “One was so dumb, but I wanted to make a recipe for one singular cookie. So I made algorithms that pulled from recipes on the net and had to find ways to get 1/8th of a egg!”

His main advice throughout the whole panel as well as directly was to just try things, since he had gone from a music major to a couple other majors to a math major with a PhD before he got where he is. He explored, made projects, and now he works at Google!

Final Thoughts/Takeaways

There was so much to learn and people to meet at this wonderful event. I networked with all sorts of people, high-schoolers, college students, and people working in the field today. I learned all about R-Studio and R programming, and I am so grateful to have gotten to experience this. That’s all, thank you for reading :)