Open Source Internship - Azis Toktobaev

         Today was such a wonderful day at work. The team is completely finished with the technical parts of Teamwork 6. We were able to create a custom HTML file from a dataset online that allows students to web scrape the data from it. We then ask students to web scrape materials from a URL to add to their existing dataframe. After, students map the data on geo-plot and analyze the results. Finally, students web scrape more data to create a pivot table to draw conclusions on coronavirus cases in different regions and sub-regions around the world.          This was a challenging task because we were required to operate at the highest level of learning where we not only needed to apply but create and ideate. We needed to think of the materials from the perspective of students learning it, and I think we did a great job. I believe that in order to best understand something you need to be able to teach it.  I enjoyed working with Robe...

         Two weeks ago, I had a difficult time thinking of the future teamwork for Chapter 6. I was not responsible for working on Chapter 6, and was only familiar with it partially. This is why yesterday I asked for Sama and Roberto's help. They are a team of pair programmers who rewrote the entirety of chapter 6 to fit a new business dataset, and are the most familiar with the contents. Together, we were able to quickly brainstorm ideas for the chapter, and by the end of the day were practically finished. Originally, I was thinking of providing students with a dataset and then asking them web scrape additional data. Sama offered that we create an HTML page ourselves, storing data in our preferred way instead of relying on an outside source.          This was so incredible for a few reasons. Firstly, I was very encouraged by Sama's willingness to be bold and create something brand new instead of adapting. Secondly, I really enjoyed how ...

         Today I asked Dr. Jan about which area of work she would like me to focus on, and I was told to continue working on preparing the class materials. I am realizing now that while I am competent at creating course materials, I do not enjoy this process as much as I enjoy solving different coding puzzles and challenges. I enjoy figuring out optimal ways in which students could improve their code, or simply learning about new tools in the industry. This is a revelation to me because I never enjoyed the idea of spending my work time on a software engineering project. However, this experience has shown that I enjoy hands-on computer science that involves problem-solving, and not teaching it.          I am also constantly questioning whether or not grad school would be right for me. I enjoy research about certain areas of computer science and not the others, which I assume is the norm. However, I do not enjoy the work on this particular...

         This was an interesting week of my Summer Institute experience - I was reminded about my humanity through my autoimmune disease. Last year I was diagnosed with a rare eye condition, uveitis, which is caused by an antigene in my body, HLA B27. I found out about this after being hospitalized during my previous internship at PAPER Magazine in New York City. That summer, I spent two weeks in pain caused by inflammation and constant migraines. This week I experienced similar pain after I started tapering down the number of steroid eye drops I put in my left eye. I was reminded about how it is hard to sleep and wake up when the condition worsens. Moreover, during the first half of the week, I had a difficult time looking at the screen and focusing on what my teammates were saying party because of pain and partly because I was worried about this being a permanent state of my health. I was suddenly reminded of the students that I have met through the Disability...

         Today was such a relief. Last week, I visited the doctor and was advised to start decreasing my medication intake for the autoimmune disease I have. As a result, two days ago my left eye started visibly inflaming. These inflammations are always followed by headaches and swelling around the area. It affected my mood, as well, because I was hoping that I could be off the medication permanently. Yesterday I used the steroids, and today I am feeling better. I made sure to capitalize on my well being today, and made bigger progress.          First, I shifted gears from writing teamwork to contributing to the book development process. I realized that writing teamworks for 8 hours a day took out all the joy out of the internship/research process for me, and I simply stopped being excited about starting my workdays. Today I continued learning materials of the book, primarily chapters 9 and 10. I really enjoy learning more about the tool...

         I have been a Teaching Assistant now for 2 years, and since May of this year, I have been operating at what I believe to be the highest level of any Teaching Assistance experience. In the past, I have been involved in peer-to-peer tutoring, homework evaluation, and I even got to teach classes in place of the professors. However, it is only since the start of the pandemic that  I got the chance to author 10 different exercise materials and edit two books for brand new courses in Data Science. To me, this work is far more challenging than teaching a class, because I need to constantly think of the students' needs and their trajectory in a course in order to create exercise materials. I need to have a balanced understanding of what students should know, and how much I can challenge them with new ideas. I need to think of their cognitive load.          Currently, I am building team works for each chapter of How To Think Like a ...

        I shifted from working on research for the book to creating original exercises and supplemental materials for the course. This is what I know how to do best when it comes to working in office environments - organizing materials to become well-structured, accessible, educational, and, most importantly, fun. I remember how I structured documentation in data management files for PAPER magazine's brand partnerships office. I was really thorough yet efficient throughout the process that later I was recommended for a special opportunity at the project management office to aid professionals with ADIDAS and Campari Group campaigns.          Now, working on original assignments, I constantly catch myself thinking introspectively of my experiences as a student and a Teaching Assistant. I think of all the times I wanted a certain part of an assignment to have better instructions or a different structure. On Monday, I finished the assignment...

           This is the second part of the Mid Summer Internship evaluation, responding to the blog prompts from the Computer Science Department: Ask your supervisor for a mid-term performance review, and write about what you learned.          I asked Dr. Jan for an evaluation of my work during our 1on1 meeting and I was pleasantly surprised by her view of my work. She reiterated what she has told me before, which is that she thinks I am a very fast worker, who gets things right. This is a good trait because she can give me different tasks and can rely on me. On the other hand, she hinted that I could work on trusting the process a little more. It was nice to hear as well, because I tend to control the process sometimes, instead of trusting that some aspects of it will get done by other people on their own time. What have you learned from the routine or boring parts of the internship? Explain.          This i...

         I will be answering some mid-evaluation prompts provided by the department.  This blog post serves as an evaluation of the Summer Institute as well as my own progress at a midway point. 1. Which of your stated internship goals have you met so far? Explain how you have met them and how you are planning to meet those not met yet?           From general goals, I have been successfully applying my academic skills to a non-departmental work environment, communicating complex ideas at the appropriate level for the opensource community audience in writing and in speech. These particular goals can be all well-seen in my teamwork cooperation and behavior. I am consistent as a group leader and a group learner. I try to be empathetic to the learning styles and challenges of all people, and try to lead by example and learn with an open mind. From my personal goals, I have definitely been successful at using my preparation as a Tea...

        This is almost the end of week 5 of the Summer Institute, and it feels like the semester is just around the corner. We have about 3 weeks left, and we are already working on Chapters 6 and 8. We ended the day yesterday with a conceptual discussion on the way the book reads for students who have never had coding experience. It became clear that we need to introduce Python and layer Markdown and Jupyter Notebooks on top of it. So, I spent this morning writing a short introduction to Markdown, assuming that the students already know how to code. Dr. Jan and I later discussed my work, and in the conversation, we both realized that Markdown and Jupyter Notebook introduction needs to come before Python for students to have an environment for testing and learning their code. So, I re-wrote the section to make it more general and broad. I enjoyed working this way, because I got to capitalize on my talents as a self-starter, creating the section on the Notebook e...

         Yesterday, I spent the day reading about Data Science programs and areas of research at different universities and research facilities. I was curious to find out about the slight differences between what is considered to be Data Science and Management Information Systems at some schools. I will reflect on the findings later and make a separate note, because I do not think I have a full grasp just yet. Additionally, I will be emailing professors, whose research I found interesting.          Today, I was invited to listen to a seminar by Wes McKinley, the founder of the Pandas library for Python and UrsaLabs, where he works on ApacheArrow. I learned about the conceptual differences between DataFrames in different languages, and the importance of creating a system, like ApacheArrow, that could convert and manipulate universal DataFrames across different platforms. On a personal note, I was excited to be there as a rookie in Data Sc...

        The workflow is established, and everyone knows what they are doing. In the morning I was invited into Sandesh's and Imma's room to introduce them to Jupyter Notebooks. It was pretty easy to know what to say and which features of the tool to stress since I spent some time yesterday with Sama and Roberto doing the same exact thing. Rebekah joined the session as well since she wanted to know more about the tools. I really enjoy explaining data science tools and breaking down concepts to others when working in a team.            I spent some time afterward in a meeting with Dr. Boggs, where we discussed the changes for Chapter 8 and  her upcoming contribution to the book. It is important that we know what we are expecting in terms of contributions as we need to know what is going to be later added to the chapters before the pair-programmers make their own changes. To be frank, I left the meeting very confused. Origina...

        I believe it is important to start this blog post by talking about my parents for the reader potentially worried about them. I called them in the morning and my mom reassured me that she and my dad are not experiencing any fever. This is really good news, however, it is still too early to celebrate as it has only been about 6 days since the symptoms started, and they are still experiencing fatigue and sinus congestion. After the call with my parents I started working on the challenge that was introduced to me yesterday: finding a dataset for Chapter 8 of the How To Think Like a Data Scientist Book.            At first glance, it seemed that this chapter was going to be the easiest one to find as it dealt with textual analysis. However, after closely examining the exercises in the book, I realized that the chapter very closely focuses on the existing dataset, which means that there is practically no room for dataset swap...

        Yesterday I spent the first 30 minutes in our everyday morning meeting, where we discussed how everyone was doing. Frankly, I was very apathetic and nervous as I was anticipating a call from my parents, who started experiencing symptoms of coronavirus on Saturday. Kyrgyzstan's hospitals are overwhelmed with patients as the government did not properly implement any of the state opening phases. There are no new hospital facilities, and doctors are incredibly underpaid and understaffed. I found out today that regular people are fundraising to equip the hospitals with ventilators. On top of all this news, the day before, my mom told me that they had a fever and started losing the ability to differentiate smells...           Whenever the morning meeting ended, I called my parents and was relieved to find out that their fever was gone. It felt like I myself could breathe again. This subject is important to document because I ...