Exploring COVID-19 Pandemic with data science

ABOUT THIS COURSE

DSC198 is a workshop-style course focused on several types of data science applications, mostly in spatial data science but extending to other areas, from information visualization to recommender systems. It will be largely driven by problems that are made urgent by the pandemic. Because of this, a precise topic sequence is hard to lay out at the start. The situation changes rapidly, and we need to be flexible. We will identify several seed projects that teams of students will attack, working alongside the instructors. These projects may change as we go.

Prerequisites: DSC-170 (Spatial Data Science) or instructor's consent. We mostly expect that you work with fellow students and with the instructors to move the projects forward, using the arsenal of tools you know already - and we will make sure to introduce you to new tools and approaches: building and querying knowledge graphs, working with linked data and schema.org, creating spatial dashboards and similar interactive applications.

COURSE TIME & LOCATION

Lead Instructor: Ilya Zaslavsky, <izaslavsky@ucsd.edu> (Ilya)

Additional instructors: Peter Rose, David Valentine, Dmitry Kudinov

Office hours: by Zoom as needed: Ilya (https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/4449998874). Request to connect via Piazza or email.

Class meetings: we will try to meet as a class once a week: mostly to review overall project progress or listen to an invited speaker. Occasionally there will be lectures by other researchers on campus addressing various data science issues of COVID-19. We will announce such lectures and invite your attendance. The bulk of class meetings will be over Zoom, with project teams.

Final Project presentations: during last week (TBD)

When you email instructors, please add "DSC198:" to the subject of your email. However, please try to use Piazza for any communications.

Assessment and Grades

This is P/NP course. To get a Pass you'll need to attend project meetings, be productive, work well on a team, and produce a good final project.

The project format will be similar to DSC170 - but more flexible. This means: we can have more than two students on a project team, and a student can be on more than one team. We will rely on each team to self-organize. Final products will be generally larger than what we did in DSC170, and expected to move forward with a solution of one or more problems we pose at the beginning. We'll jointly develop weekly plans for each project team, and discuss them at weekly meetings. The deliverable will no longer be a single well-documented Jupyter notebook. Rather, it would be a collection of notebooks and online applications, working as part of a bigger system, and implementing a series of data science techniques.

software

We will use ESRI software as in DSC170, and several additional systems such as Neo4J. You are already familiar with ArcGIS Python API from DSC170 - but feel free to also use Geopandas, Geopy, and other open source tools if they get you to accomplishing project goals faster. For questions and resources related to ESRI see DSC170 syllabus at https://sites.google.com/ucsd.edu/dsc170winter20, in particular the Links and Resources section.

You are also welcome to use any other software you know or want to explore - please suggest to your teams and run by the instructors.

Academic Integrity policy

Academic Integrity Policies apply to workshop classes in the same way they apply to regular classes. Act responsibly! Some specific clauses won't apply here, of course, because we won't have separately graded homework assignments or tests. But we will definitely use data and code from others, and must acknowledge their work. Also, when you publish your data and code, document it (ideally, following some standard markup), to make it easier for other to cite and use. Fighting the epidemic is a huge community effort, with thousands of people collaborating by sharing their data, code and results, and we are a part of it. While everything is happening very fast (e.g., papers with important results regularly bypass normal review timelines) it doesn't mean that academic integrity is curtailed in any way.

DIVERSITY and inclusion

We are committed to fostering a learning environment for this course that supports a diversity of thoughts, perspectives and experiences, and respects your identities (including race, ethnicity, heritage, gender, sex, class, sexuality, religion, ability, age, educational background, etc.). Our goal is to create a diverse and inclusive learning environment where all students feel comfortable and can thrive.

Our instructional staff will make a concerted effort to be welcoming and inclusive to the wide diversity of students in this course. If there is a way we can make you feel more included please let one of the course staff know, either in person, via email/discussion board, or even in a note under the door. Our learning about diverse perspectives and identities is an ongoing process, and we welcome your perspectives and input.

We also expect that you, as a student in this course, will honor and respect your classmates, abiding by the UCSD Principles of Community (https://ucsd.edu/about/principles.html). Please understand that others’ backgrounds, perspectives and experiences may be different than your own, and help us to build an environment where everyone is respected and feels comfortable.If you experience any sort of harassment or discrimination, please contact the instructor as soon as possible. If you prefer to speak with someone outside of the course, please contact the Office of Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination: https://ophd.ucsd.edu/

accommodations

The Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD), an Academic Affairs department, is responsible for the review of medical documentation and the determination of reasonable accommodations based on a disability. Authorization for Accommodation (AFA) letters are issued by the OSD and given to undergraduate, graduate, and Professional School students directly. If you have an AFA letter, meet with the CSE Student Affairs representative, and schedule an appointment with your instructor by the end of Week 2 to ensure that reasonable accommodations for the quarter can be arranged.

staying healthy and sane

Please track health-related announcements and follow regulations and advice coming from the University and from local, state and federal governments. Most importantly, try to stay healthy and sane. This quarter is unusual, everybody's lives are disrupted. Please stay sensitive to needs and problems of your fellow students. If you suspect any virus symptoms or think you may have been exposed to the infection, make sure you get medical advice and self-isolate as soon as possible.