Open Source Internship - Azis Toktobaev

        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...

        If I were to break down the experience into different stretches, I would categorize the last week and a half to be the orientation process and yesterday to be the start of the more mundane part of the internship. I feel as though I finally have a grasp of what we are doing and feel a sense of comfort with my duties as a research and open-source developer student. Previously, I was tasked with finding the dataset for Chapter 2 of the How to Think Like a Data Scientist textbook. My goal was to analyze different opensource databases and find a dataset that would resemble the original chapter dataset, World Happiness Rankings. The new dataset needed to be  more relevant to Business students as the class we are working on is a dual perspective between Business and Computer Science departments. I analyzed many databases, including Kaggle, data.gov, Google Public Data, Awesome Public Datasets, opendata.aws, datacommons.org, and Public Data of the City of N...

          The last few days were a bit stormy for me as I was adjusting to the new workflow and the new team. It was particularly difficult because we were not given what we felt like enough directions at the beginning. This, however, was out of the hands of our instructors who are doing far more than what they had panned out for their summers. Many of the students interning at Berea, including myself, had plans to travel for work/research opportunities at different companies and research institutions across the country. When COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a shutdown of our campus and the end of the internship program, the Computer Science department created emergency spaces in our summer internship and research programs for all students who had been affected. Thanks to the department, I am dealing well with the implications of the pandemic during this instrumental summer on my path to graduate school. I am learning more about what it means to be a research ...