Data Science

Hugh Kadhem

Data Science Fellow
Mathematics

Hugh Kadhem is a Ph.D. student in Applied Mathematics, with broad research interests in computational quantum physics and high-performance scientific computing.

Mapping Census Data with tidycensus

November 6, 2023
by Alex Ramiller. The U.S. Census Bureau provides a rich source of publicly available data for a wide variety of research applications. However, the traditional process of downloading these data from the census website is slow, cumbersome, and inefficient. The R package “tidycensus” provides researchers with a tool to overcome these challenges, enabling a streamlined process to quickly downloading numerous datasets directly from the census API (Application Programming Interface). This blog post provides a basic workflow for the use of the tidycensus package, from installing the package and identifying variables to efficiently downloading and mapping census data.

Python Fundamentals: Parts 1-3

December 4, 2023, 10:00am
This three-part interactive workshop series is your complete introduction to programming Python for people with little or no previous programming experience. By the end of the series, you will be able to apply your knowledge of basic principles of programming and data manipulation to a real-world social science application.

R Fundamentals: Parts 1-4

December 4, 2023, 10:00am
This workshop is a four-part introductory series that will teach you R from scratch with clear introductions, concise examples, and support documents. You will learn how to download and install the open-sourced R Studio software, understand data and basic manipulations, import and subset data, explore and visualize data, and understand the basics of automation in the form of loops and functions. After completion of this workshop you will have a foundational understanding to create, organize, and utilize workflows for your personal research.

Python Data Wrangling and Manipulation with Pandas

November 15, 2023, 9:00am
Pandas is a Python package that provides fast, flexible, and expressive data structures designed to make working with 'relational' or 'labeled' data both easy and intuitive. It enables doing practical, real world data analysis in Python. In this workshop, we'll work with example data and go through the various steps you might need to prepare data for analysis.

Artificial Intelligence and the Mental Health Space: Current Failures and Future Directions

October 31, 2023
by María Martín López. María Martín López, a PhD student in the department of psychology whose research focuses on large language models within the context of mental illness, gives an overview of current failures and possible future directions of NLP models in the mental health space. She brings up questions that must be considered by all researchers working in this space and encourages these individuals to think creatively about the use of AI beyond direct treatment.

Jailynne Estevez

Consulting Drop-In Hours: Fri 3pm-5pm

Consulting Areas: Python, SQL, Stata, HTML / CSS, Javascript, Google AppScripts, Databases & SQL, Data Manipulation and Cleaning, Data Science, Data Sources, Data Visualization, Python Programming, Surveys, Sampling & Interviews, Text Analysis, , Bash or Command Line, Excel, Git or Github, Stata

Quick-tip: the fastest way to speak to a consultant is to first ...

Introduction to Item Response Theory

October 24, 2023
by Mingfeng Xue. Measurements (e.g., tests, surveys, questionnaires) are inevitably involved with various sources of errors. Among many psychometric theories, item response theory stands out for its capability of detailed analyses at the item level and its potential to reduce some of the measurement errors. This post first discussed the limitations of conventional summation and average, which give rise to the IRT models, and then introduced a basic form of the Rasch model, including expressions of the model, the assumptions underlying it, some of its advantages, and software packages. Some codes are also provided.

María Martín López

Data Science Fellow
Psychology

María Martín López is a PhD student in the Cognition area within the Department of Psychology. Her research relates to cognitive computational and quantitative models of individual differences in behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. She is particularly interested in how we can create and leverage novel algorithms to understand, measure, and predict processes relating to externalizing psychopathology (e.g. impulsivity, aggression, substance use). She answers these questions using a range of computational and quantitive models including AI, NLP, SEM, time series analysis, multi-level...

Using Forest Plots to Report Regression Estimates: A Useful Data Visualization Technique

October 17, 2023
by Sharon Green. Regression models help us understand relationships between two or more variables. In many cases, results are summarized in tables that present coefficients, standard errors, and p-values. Reading these can be a slog. Figures such as forest plots can help us communicate results more effectively and may lead to a better understanding of the data. This blog post is a tutorial on two different approaches to creating high-quality and reproducible forest plots, one using ggplot2 and one using the forestplot package.