Valentine’s Day: a day known for flowers, chocolates and … data. This Feb. 14 is marked by the annual Love Data Week, which is hosted by The Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science in conjunction with Tulane University libraries. Love Data Week, which runs Feb. 10-14, will celebrate data through several events including lectures, a game night and a data visualization contest.
CAIDS is a new initiative that aims to improve data literacy through introductory data courses and workshops, research funding and co-curricular experiences and events, such as Love Data Week.
The week will kick off on Monday, Feb. 10 with lectures spanning topics of AI and the use of social media in the men’s rights movement. The day will end with a game night in the library. Virtual and in-person lectures will be held the rest of week both virtually and in-person in the library. On Wednesday, there will be a mixer discussing the launch of the new multidisciplinary research lab: the Discrimination, Disparities and Data Lab, or D3 Lab. Students will be able to socialize and network with researchers and learn about projects in the lab.
Love Data Week culminates with the Data Visualization and Physicalization Contest Reception on Friday, Feb. 14, where accepted entries will be awarded and featured in a gallery walk. The best graduate and undergraduate creators will receive $250 from CAIDS, and only 12 submissions will be accepted to the gallery.
One contestant, Julia Miller, is also a data research intern for CAIDS and will be submitting a map showing the most likely regions of flooding in East Baton Rouge Parish, where she is from. The visualization is based on data about precipitation, elevation, slope change and proximity to streams.
“I think it’s important because a lot of our life is run … by data,” Miller said. “It’s cool to have a day where we can focus on it.”
Although this is only the second annual Love Data Week celebration at Tulane, it has been internationally celebrated since the inaugural Love Data Week in 2016.
