Topics

• Python-based data science to understand knowledge discovery and expertise: A science perspective
  By: Daniel E. Acuna
  Length: 45 Minutes
  Description: All kinds of businesses are using data science and machine learning to understand themselves, lowering costs, engineering better products, and improving customer experiences. Similarly, we use data science to improve science itself, understanding how scientific topics are discovered and modeling institutional expertise. In our work, we use a combination of Python-powered big data analytics and web-based tools to achieve this goal, including pyspark (http://spark.apache.org), scikit-learn (http://http://scikit-learn.org), Django (https://www.djangoproject.com/), Celery (http://www.celeryproject.org/), and or-tools (https://developers.google.com/optimization). First, we will present the infrastructure behind Scholarfy, a recommender system for massive scientific conferences (http://www.scholarfy.net). We will also present a machine learning approach to automatically match expert scientific reviewers to research proposals (http://pr.scienceofscience.org). Finally, we will present the work behind our award-winning visualization, World’s Science Map (http://map.scienceofscience.org), where we modeled the institutional expertise, collaboration network, and funding of all institutions in the world. At the end of our talk, we will argue that Python-powered data science can improve not only businesses but also science, making it more agile and accurate.
• ChiPy Python Mentorship
  By: Tathagata
  Length: 7 Minutes
  Description: This April we will the start the fourth round of ChiPy's mentorship program. We have worked with more than 70 developers till now, and some of them have landed exciting jobs by showcasing their mentorship projects. I'll give a quick view of the program and what are we looking for in a mentor and a mentee. FAQ: http://www.chipy.org/pages/sigs/mentorship/
• Job Market
  By: Jerry Dumblauskas
  Length: 15 Minutes
  Description: Let's see what's happening in the Python Job market in Chicago!
• The wonder and the horror of the mock module
  By: Stephen Hoover
  Length: 5 Minutes
  Description: The "mock" module is a powerful (and fun!) tool for unit testing, and it comes built in to the the Python standard library. I'll give an overview of some of the more useful features of the module, and finish with a warning about the dangers of too much mockery.