Last Monday marked the beginning of Love Data Week, hosted by the Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science in conjunction with the Tulane University Libraries.
Love Data Week featured lectures, workshops and contests emphasizing the real-world applications of data, approaches to data analysis, computer science and artificial intelligence.
Monday kicked off with a virtual session, “Finding Data Through Tulane University Libraries,” that discussed how to find data across all subjects through the University Libraries. This session was followed by “Becoming Radicalized: The Evolution of Hateful Rhetoric in the Men’s Rights Movement,” which explored how social media has facilitated the expansion of radical communities and hateful rhetoric. The session featured a study that examines social media as a tool to promote hateful discourse. Monday concluded with a workshop detailing how to use the most important AI tools and a game night hosted by The Data Lab.
Tuesday featured lectures covering the applications of data technology and software in research. Tulane IT Research Technology Delivery Overview of Researcher Services delivered a broad overview of the support services, data storage options and research software that are readily available to Tulane researchers. Similarly, Tulane IT Research Technology Delivery Computation and Analysis Resources offered a deeper look into “advanced computation and data analysis tools,” including “computing clusters, specialized software and methods for working with large datasets.” The Tuesday afternoon sessions included a workshop about STATA, a data analysis software and an introduction to drafting “data management and sharing plans using the DMPTool” in the context of research.
Wednesday included an instructional session on the use of Microsoft Excel as a statistical tool and a social mixer for the students and research assistants in the Discrimination, Disparities, and Data Lab. Thursday featured basic and advanced lectures on data security for research, a machine learning workshop in Python and a quantitative text analysis workshop using Voyant.
Love Data Week concluded Friday with a discussion about the use of AI in musical composition. The session opened with two classical music recordings: one AI-generated and one human-composed. Without a background in classical music, the two compositions were difficult to distinguish. Zachary Pine, adjunct instructor in the Newcomb Department of Music, spoke about generative AI as a tool to create music. Pine stated that the process behind AI music generation primarily takes two forms: convolutional neural networks and attention-based transformers. Convolutional neural networks focus on short-term patterns in music, while attention-based transformers understand full compositions.
Pine posed important questions about the implications of AI in the music industry, including job displacement and the ethics of AI art.
“As a listener, would you feel upset to find out that [the music] was made by a computer?” Pine asked. “Would you feel betrayed, if you spent the whole time identifying with the supposed soul behind the work and then there wasn’t one?”
The final event of the week was the Data Visualization Contest Reception, which featured over 30 data visualization submissions by students, faculty and staff. Annika Nelson, a senior double majoring in public health and cell and molecular biology, took first and Martina Vasconez Suarez won second among undergraduates. Nelson’s project featured data from Lake Pontchartrain water samples tested for bacteria in the genus of Vibrio.
“I’m looking for things like cholera and other pathogenic bacteria in the lake water at recreational sites where people might interact with them,” Nelson said.
Baris Alan won first among graduate students and Jinpeng Bai, a graduate student in the neuroscience program, took second. Bai’s project examined the uses of traditional Chinese medicine as a way to treat neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease. Bai spoke about the meaning and impact behind Love Data Week and the data visualization contest.
“I think it’s very meaningful for the library to hold these events just [so that] everyone’s effort can be seen,” Bai said.
As Love Data Week came to an end, Jacqueline Thoni Howard, an inaugural professor of practice and associate director of student engagement at the Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science, and Lisa Dilks, professor of practice and associate director of curriculum & assessment at CAIDS, reflected on the event.
Howard discussed how Love Data Week provided students, faculty and staff with a variety of data-oriented experiences.
“There’s just been a range of different types of experiences, from discussion groups to workshops to contests and student submissions,” Howard said. “It just shows a range of ways in which the Tulane community is interacting with data, and that’s really what stood out to me.”
Dilks spoke about the future of Love Data Week and CAIDS.
“I definitely want us to continue to refine and think about our data week programming. I know we’re going to send out some surveys to ask people about things that they would like to see added,” Dilks said. “I’m the associate director for curriculum and assessment [at CAIDS], so a lot of my focus has been on trying to get a certificate and a minor in data up and running.”
