Means Tests

Grace Hu

Data Science for Social Justice Fellow 2024
Bioengineering

Grace is a 3rd year Bioengineering PhD candidate in the joint UC Berkeley-UCSF Graduate Program. Her research lies at the nexus of computational design and 3D-bioprinting to advance tissue engineering for regenerative medicine. She previously studied Materials Science and Engineering (B.S.) and Computer Science (M.S.) at Stanford University, where she investigated printable batteries to power an ultra-affordable scanning electron microscope and explored computer science education research by developing AI models to augment teaching ability.

In her free time she...

Design Your Observational Study with the Joint Variable Importance Plot

March 12, 2024
Lauren Liao
by Lauren Liao. When evaluating causal inference in observational studies, there often is a natural imbalance in the data. Luckily, variables are often measured alongside that can be helpful for adjustment. However, deciding which variables should be prioritized for adjustment is not trivial – since not all variables are equally important to the intervention or the outcome. I recommend using the joint variable importance plot during the observational study design phase to visualize which variables should be prioritized. This post provides a gentle guide on how to do so and why it is important.

Creating the Ultimate Sweet

January 30, 2024
Emma Turtelboom
by Emma Turtelboom. What is the best Halloween candy? In this blog post, we will identify attributes of popular sweets and create a model to understand how these attributes influence the popularity of the sweet. We’ll discuss alternative model approaches and potential drawbacks, as well as caveats to interpreting the predictions of our model.

Reine Ngnonsse

IUSE Undergraduate Advisory Board
Genetics and Plant Biology

Reine Ngnonsse, an enthusiast for math and technology, delved into tutoring math at a community college through the EOPs program. At UC Berkeley, while pursuing Genetics and Plant Biology, She explored R programming in a CRISPR project. As an intern at Health Career Connection, Reine expanded coding skills in Python, R, and Tableau, igniting a passion for programming. With exposure to Python and Javascript, she can't wait to merge mathematical prowess with coding finesse for innovative solutions.

Exploratory Data Analysis in Social Science Research

November 14, 2023
Kamya Yadav
by Kamya Yadav. Causal inference has become the dominant endeavor for many political scientists, often at the expense of good research questions and theory building. Returning to descriptive inference – the process of describing the world as it exists – can help formulate research questions worth asking and theory that is grounded in reality. Exploratory data analysis is one method of conducting descriptive inference. It can help social science researchers find empirical patterns and puzzles that motivate their research questions, test correlations between variables, and engage with the existing literature on a topic. In this blog post, I walk through results from exploratory data analysis I conducted for my dissertation project on political ambition of women.

James Hall

Consultant
Department of Statistics

James Hall is a graduate student in the Statistics MA program at University of California, Berkeley. He is a husband and father to three awesome kids. Originally from Baltimore, MD, James earned his bachelors in Mathematics at the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY in 2011, and served as a U.S. Army officer. He’s served as a leader at multiple levels within large organizations with a professional focus on visualizing and communicating complex analysis to decision makers. James’ experience and coursework give him expertise in navigating different statistical methods,...

Michael Ruiz

IUSE Research Team
Psychology

Michael earned his B.A.in Psychology from UC Berkeley and currently works as the manager of Professor Okonofua's Equity, Diversity, and Empathy Navigation Sciences Lab in the UC Berkeley Psychology department.

Avery Richards

Senior Data Science Fellow
School of Public Health

Avery is an MPH graduate at the School of Public Health. With a background in literature and behavioral health, his current research focuses on innovations in applied epidemiology, including multidisciplinary approaches to health and social science data. Avery's general interests include public health surveillance, data quality assurance, and geospatial analysis.

Josh Everts

School of Information

I'm a Master's student at the Berkeley School of Information in the MIMS program, studying Data Science. I am especially interested in applying the statistical and computational methods of Data Science to problems within the natural sciences and transportation. To this end I am currently helping with the data analysis of a spectroscopy experiment at SLAC National Lab. Outside of academic work I enjoy improving my cooking skills, biking, and learning about history and geography.

Katherine Wolf

Adjunct Fellow
Environmental Science, Policy, and Management

Doctoral student in Rachel Morello-Frosch's laboratory in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management working at the intersection of environmental epidemiology, environmental justice, and causal inference. Particularly interested in developing quantitative methods to investigate the operation of social power in environmental monitoring regimes in the United States.