Student Seminar

12:00 - 12:45 PM, Wednesday, March 23, SLC120

Comparing Geospatial Interpolation Methods for Modeling Snow Depths

David Larson

This project focuses on geospatial interpolation, which is the predicting of unknown values at geographical locations using locations with known values. This project examined various geospatial interpolation methods and comparing them by evaluating how well they were able to predict snow depth. These methods include nearest neighbor, inverse distance weighting, and kriging.

       Fantasy Football Projections with Data Analytics

Caleb VanDerBeek



In this talk, I will be discussing the accuracy of fantasy football projections, how they are made, and how to make them yourself. I will also discuss why it is so hard to create accurate predictions, especially without data. The intent of the project was to learn new ways to clean, summarize, and visualize data in relation to fantasy football.

Departmental Seminar

March Madness! Picking Your NCAA Bracket with Linear Algebra

Dr. Aaron Wangberg
Winona State University


Abstract:  How do you pick your NCAA Bracket? Do you value home wins, early season games, and blowouts against Division II and III foes? Or is it better to base everything on the last five games of the season? Bring your computer to fill out your NCAA Bracket and hear the math that has helped WSU Linear Algebra students finish in the top 90% of ESPN's Bracket Challenge.

Wednesday, March 16th,

12:00- 12:50 PM

Science Laboratory Center/SLC 120


Happy Pi Day!

 

Dr. Leonhardi and Dr. Bergen were pie-ed by the Math/Stat Club.

Distinguished Lecturer Series

 

We are pleased to announce that our Distinguished Lecturer in Mathematics and Statistics for the 2021-22 academic year, Dr. Lauren Klein of Emory University, will be presenting on Zoom two distinguished lectures: “Data Feminism in Action” on Wednesday, March 2, from 3-4 p.m. and “Data Feminism” on Thursday, March 3, from 12:45-1:45 p.m.


Dr. Lauren Klein is Winship Distinguished Research Professor and Associate Professor in the departments of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods at Emory University. Klein works at the intersection of digital humanities, data science, and early American literature, with a focus on issues of gender and race. She is the author of “An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States” (2020) and, with Catherine D’Ignazio, “Data Feminism” (2020). With Matthew K. Gold, she edits “Debates in the Digital Humanities,” a hybrid print-digital publication stream that explores debates in the field as they emerge.

 

Talk #1: Data Feminism in Action (Virtual)

Date: Wednesday, March 2

Time: 3:00 - 4:00 pm

In-Person Viewing Location: SLC 120

Zoom Link: https://minnstate.zoom.us/j/91571903912

Abstract: What is feminist data science? How is feminist thinking being incorporated into data-driven work? How are scholars in the humanities and social sciences bringing together data science and feminist theory in their research? Drawing from her recent book, “Data Feminism,“ coauthored with Catherine D’Ignazio, Klein will present a set of principles for doing data science that are informed by the past several decades of intersectional feminist activism and critical thought. To illustrate these principles, as well as some of the ways that scholars and designers have begun to put them into action, she will discuss a range of recent research projects including several of her own: 1) a thematic analysis of a large corpus of nineteenth-century newspapers that reveals the invisible labor of women newspaper editors; 2) the development of a model of lexical semantic change that, when combined with network analysis, tells a new story about Black activism in the nineteenth-century United States; and 3) an interactive book on the history of data visualization that shows how questions of politics have been present in the field since its start. Taken together, these examples demonstrate how feminist thinking can be operationalized into more ethical, more intentional, and more capacious data practices. 

 

Talk #2: Data Feminism (Virtual)

Date: Thursday, March 3

Time: 12:45 – 1:45 pm

In-Person Viewing Location: Kryzsko Ballroom (registration required)

Zoom Link: https://minnstate.zoom.us/j/96504864291

Abstract: As data are increasingly mobilized in the service of governments and corporations, their unequal conditions of production, their asymmetrical methods of application, and their unequal effects on both individuals and groups have become increasingly difficult for data scientists to ignore. But it is precisely this power that makes it worth asking: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? These are some of the questions that emerge from what we call data feminism, a way of thinking about data science and its communication that is informed by the past several decades of intersectional feminist activism and critical thought. Illustrating data feminism in action, this talk will show how challenges to the male/female binary can help to challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems; it will explain how an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization; how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems; and why the data never, ever “speak for themselves.” The goal of this talk is to model how scholarship can be transformed into action: how feminist thinking can be operationalized in order to imagine more ethical and equitable data practices.