Open Source Internship - Azis Toktobaev

        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 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...

        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...

        I am combining the last three days of work into one blog post as they were all focused on one issue. In the span of the last few days, I analyzed over 6 different database websites and over 500 different datasets; I was confident I found a good dataset for Chapter 2, however, soon had to scrap all of our work. On day 10, I moved on to analyze other parts of the book. Chapters 3 & 4 discussed important parts of the process, however, they did not need any major changes nor additions. Chapter 5, however, turned out to be the single most important part of the book as it introduces Pandas and NumPy libraries to students who may have never had a computer science course prior to reading this book. This is, of course, a major problem as we are expecting Business major students with no coding experience. I was tasked with reading, analyzing, and taking notes on the ideas introduced in the chapter and its complementary readings. This was in preparation fo...

        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...

        It is Monday, again, and I am pleased to report on my adjustment to the routine, which I talked about on Day 2. I have always been in awe of people for whom it is natural and easy to wake up early in the morning, for some, having only slept 5-6 hours. This was never the case for me. I always had a hard time waking up early and needed at least 8-9 hours of sleep. In retrospect, I believe that since I was a kid I have been involved in all sorts of non-routine activities, from dog handling to volunteering on different projects, that prevented me from learning about proper commitment to a sleep schedule. And while this non-stable regime worked all throughout high school, it definitely affected my college career, especially, in the beginning. I learned to pay close attention to my physical and mental needs, studied about sleep from a point of view of neurobiology, and accepted that my brain may simply need more time to recover than some of my friends' 5-6 clo...