After months of preparation, here we are.
This week we kicked off the second edition of the DataShack program on Data Science that brings together interdisciplinary teams of data science, software engineering & computer science, and design students from Harvard (Institute of Applied Computational Science) and Politecnico di Milano (faculties of Engineering and Design).
The students will address big data extraction, analysis, and visualization problems provided by two real-world stakeholders in Italy: the Como city municipality and Moleskine.
The Moleskine Data-Shack project will explore the popularity and success of different Moleskine products co-branded with other famous brands (also known as special editions) and launched in specific periods in time. The main field of analysis is the impact that different products have on social media channels. Social media analysis then will be correlated with product distribution and sales performance data, along multiple dimensions (temporal, geographical, etc.) and product features.
The project consists of collecting and analyzing data about the city and the way people live and move within it, by integrating multiple and diverse data sources. The problems to be addressed may include providing estimates of human density and movements within the city, predicting the impact of hypothetical future events, determining the best allocation of sensors in the streets, and defining optimal user experience and interaction for exploring the city data.
The teams have been formed, and the problems assigned. I really look forward to advising the groups in the next months and seeing the results that will come out. The students have shown already commitment and engagement. I’m confident that they will be excellent and innovative this year!
For further activities on data science within our group you can refer to the DataScience Lab site, Socialometers, and Urbanscope.
