Day 21, 22 & 23: Major Shift in Research

        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 for Chapter 2, which deals with Data Analysis using Google Sheets. The challenge was not writing the instructions but choosing a proper dataset. In fact, I have learned that proper data is the single most important key in data science. Now, I realize that being able to choose a relevant dataset comes with a pre-requisite toolbox of skills on its own, such as evaluating analytical procedures as well as statistical and computational tools appropriate to the data and being able to answer the posed question by the client. Not being able to do these skills means not fully understanding the data needed for the job.
        Today, I started working on the original assignment for Chapter 5, which introduces students to the Pandas library. So far, I am not worried about the chapter nor the dataset I have chosen (NYC Yellow Taxi Drivers.) However, I am slightly nervous about the assignments after this one as they become more complicated in their analytical tools, which means that the datasets become much more intricate and problem-specific. However, I am choosing not to worry about the issues that may or may not arise, and instead focus on what I am working on at the moment.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 18 & 19: The Book is Coming Together and It Is Beautiful

         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...
Read more

Day 16: Boundaries and Informal Leadership

        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...
Read more

Days 24 & 25: Highest Level of Teaching Assistantship

         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 ...
Read more