The Data Science Experience
Why take a course in Data Science when you can Experience it?
Hosted by the Department of Statistics & Data Science, the Carnegie Mellon Pre-College Data Science Experience is an umbrella program of optional activities that immerses high school students attending Carnegie Mellon during the summer session into the world of Data Science.
The CMU AP/EA (Pre-College) program enrolls an extremely talented class of high school students who take two college-level courses in a wide range of topics including STEM, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Students are exposed to research projects through the CMU Undergraduate Research Office Summer Research Fellowship program. There is also a strong diversity outreach component and local community engagement.
Drawing strength from CMU's Simon Initiative and strong commitment to improving learning outcomes through cross-disciplinary research and technology-enhanced learning, the Data Science Experience is a connected set of opportunities to learn about how data science can be harnessed to answer questions across all disciplines. Activities are optional and cover broad topics with something for everyone. Students will be able to participate regardless of experience or background. Data sets, code, analyses, and resources will be maintained and available to all during and after the program. Explore the side menus to learn more!
Questions about the Data Science Experience? Contact Rebecca Nugent or Gordon Weinberg.
Below is a list of some proposed activities for the Summer 2018 Experience
- Crowdsourcing noise pollution to visualize and analyze trends
around CMU campus and Pittsburgh
- Playing get-to-know-you games through social network analysis
- Collecting interesting text fragments or sentences; how do they differ in sentiment or historical context? How do we visualize changes in language over time?
- Capturing our surroundings in photos; using image analysis
to characterize historical changes in architecture (e.g.)
- Workshop on the misuse of statistics or "Statistics Done Wrong"
- Mini-hackathons with easy-to-use Data Explorer Platforms
(requires no coding or programming)
- Sports analytics workshops hosted by our CMU Sports Analytics Club;
meet with analysts working in professional sports
- Speakers from industry (e.g., Disney Research, Google, RAND)
- Data as Art show/presentation
For the students, a typical activity will involve collecting data, generating research questions, listening to speakers, or exploring problems. Analyses will be led by professors and graduate students in Statistics & Data Science; students are welcome to participate in the analysis phase as little or as much as they want. Results will be presented and posted on the website.
around CMU campus and Pittsburgh
to characterize historical changes in architecture (e.g.)
(requires no coding or programming)
meet with analysts working in professional sports
Data used/created along with platforms and code
- During the Data Science Experience, this page will be updated with activity results.
- As a preview, you're welcome to start by exploring a few data sets through our
Data Explorer Platform:
Airlines : information on 500 randomly chosen flights in 2008
Bike Sharing: two years of information from the Capital Bike Share program
Foods: nutritional content for 4300 different foods
NYC Housing: information about the housing conditions in NYC across boroughs
Data Explorer Platform:
Airlines : information on 500 randomly chosen flights in 2008
Bike Sharing: two years of information from the Capital Bike Share program
Foods: nutritional content for 4300 different foods
NYC Housing: information about the housing conditions in NYC across boroughs