CS 638: Data Science in Wisconsin

Time: 11am-1pm on Mondays. First required class is on Sep 14.

Overview:This project-based course will involve writing Python code to analyze and visualize data sets about the City of Madison, WI. The goal will be to arrive at actionable suggestions. In 2012, the city adopted an open-data policy; projects will analyze data that is released under this policy (http://data-cityofmadison.opendata.arcgis.com/) and possibly other data that city collaborators may provide for this course. Project teams will create data visualizations and present them to the class on a weekly basis. Teams will choose their projects (though we will provide suggestions) and set their own agenda.

Students will form teams of 2-4 people and choose a topic. Within each team, each student will be expected to produce 2-3 high-quality visualizations per week about the given topic; the code and plots will be committed to a team git repo. Students will state the question(s) that motivate each plot and explicitly write their conclusions; they will further organize the plots into a logical narrative sequence. Each week, each student should be prepared to present their weekly analysis to the class; depending on enrollment, students might either present each week or be randomly selected to present. At the end of the semester, students will consolidate their results into a full presentation that they will give. Students will be graded on (1) their visualizations, (2) their communication about those visualizations, (3) their participation in discussing the results of other students, and (4) their final presentations.