mathbabe

I’m really excited to be a part of the datadive this weekend organized by Data Without Borders. From their website:

Selected NGOs will work with data enthusiasts over the weekend to better understand their data, create analyses and insights, and receive free consultations.

I’ve been asked to be a “data wrangler” at the event, which means I’m going to help project manage one of the projects of the weekend, which is super exciting. It means I get to hear about cool ideas and techniques as they happen. We’re expecting quite a few data scientists, so the amount of nerdiness should be truly impressive, as well as the range of languages and computing power. I’m borrowing a linux laptop since my laptop isn’t powerful enough for the large data and the crunching. I’ve got both python and R ready to go.

I can’t say (yet) who the N.G.O. is or what exactly the data is or what the related questions are, but let me say, very very cool. One huge reason I started this blog was to use data science techniques to answer questions that could actually really matter to people. This is my first real experience with that kind of non-commercial question and data set, and it’s really fantastic. The results of the weekend will be saved and open.

I’ll be posting over the weekend about the project as well as showing interim results, so stay tuned!