The Data Library now offers a new Jupyter web service, where you can get an (almost) fully configured Jupyter installation, without fighting the installation on your own machine. It’s probably best to install it yourself, if you can, but for everyone else, this service is a great option. The Url is: http://jupyter.sandiegodata.org You log into the service with Github, but before you can log, your github account must be a member of the SDRDL Data Projects Github organization. Email your github user id to eric@sandiegodata.org to request access.

The San Francisco Estuary Institute is running a visualization contest for water quality measurements from San Francisco Bay. The Data Library will be organizing a team to create one or more submissions. If you’d like to join the project, come to our next meetup or join our Water Project Google Group.

The Civic Knowledge Insights service is a Question and Answer website for social questions and data driven answers. The San Diego Regional Data Library will be using it to organize data questions from journalists, nonprofits, governments and social enterprises and to recruit volunteer analysts to answer the questions. Future Data Library meetings will focus on working on creating answers to the questions. Please ask a question! This site is the best way for San Diegans who have data-driven questions to connect with the experts who are mostly likely to know, or be able to find, the answer. Follow the #insights Slack Channel to get updates from the service: new questions, answers and comments. And, if you know something about a question, feel free to add an answer. We’re setting up this site as a new direction for running Data Library projects, to make it easier for analysts to get engaged and work on questions that interest them, and to make it easier for the public to submit questions. The site is just getting started, but here are two examples of questions with answers:

One of the difficult parts of working on a Data Library project is setting up all of the tools, including Python, Jupyter, Metatab, Pandas and several others. To make it easier to get started, I’ve set up a hosted instance of JupyterHub, which will allow analysts to run Jupyter notebooks in the cloud. And, the instance uses Redmine for authentication, so you won’t need to create yet another account.

Once you have joined a project and gotten a Redmine account, you can use your Redmine account username and password to log into jupyter.civicknowledge.com. You’ll get a new JupyterLab server. JupyterLab is a lot like Jupyter Notebook, but has a spiffier interface.

For its data program for Summer 2018, The San Diego Regional Data Library proposes to build a data repository for water quality data, to make it easier to find water quality data, link it together and to create maps, reports and analyses. The project will be run with a small paid staff and a group of volunteers, and if the project is successful, we will pursue funding for continued maintenance. This project is over, but see theproject website for archived results. Data we expect to collect, process and store will include:

For the Spring and Summer of 2018, The Data Library is recruiting a part time intern to support the Summer projects. This position will involve a range of activities that includes community engagement, outreach and project management.

• Project Management. Work with project teams to recruit participants, track progress and set up meetings.
• Outreach. Identify and contact nonprofits, journalists, and government officials and departments who may be interested in sponsoring data projects or using the results of existing data projects.
• Community Engagement. Attend technical events to talk about the Data Library and recruit analysts.

The position will pay $15 per hour for up to 80 hours per month. To apply, email eric@sandiegodata.org with: a URL to your LinkedIn page, a description of which San Diego area social and civic organizations are most likely to be interested in pro bono data analysis projects, how you would contact those organizations, and a brief description of your pitch to them.

For Spring and Summer 2018, the Data Library will be hosting summer analysts and data scientists to work on special projects.

Special Social Analysis Projects

Pursue special projects in social analysis with large, individual-level datasets like IPUMS, GSS and NLSY. Social Science students, or any student interested in applying data science and statistical techniques to social questions, can learn to work with some of the most important datasets for studying individual attitudes, behaviors and beliefs. Each project will have 1 or two team members and will answer questions chosen by the students under the guidance of Data Library staff and analysts.

We’re working on building a new knowledge base, a collection of example Jupyter notebooks related to projects the Library has been working on. The notebooks include detailed analyses using Jupyter, Python, Pandas and other tools, with most of the notebooks covering crime and demographics. For instance, the Demographics and Business Loans notebooks shows how to fetch American Community Survey data and create a radius around the highest minority area in San Diego, displaying it a Leaflet Map: Or, from the San Diego Police Calls For Service, a rhythm map of reports of loud parties, by neighborhood.   Loud Party Rhythm Map Each of the notebooks includes a link to our example notebooks github repository, so you can also get the full source and run them yourself.

Tonight we’ll be meeting to talk about two important collections of survey data, The General Social Survey (GSS) and a broad collection of integrated survey datasets, IPUMS.org. Additionally, we’ll be meeting with David Lynn, founder of Mission Driven Finance, to talk about his volunteer data project to analyze business lending to minorities in San Diego county. In the main meeting, I’ll show how to use the web-analysis tools for the GSS and IPUMS. You can visit those sites now to explore a bit, and it would be worthwhile for you to create an account before the meeting. Here are the important URLs:

link Disadvantaged Student Performance For Summer of 2017, The San Diego Regional Data Library will be running a data internship program, working on pro-bono data analysis projects for nonprofits, governments and journalists in San Diego County. If your organization has questions that can be answered with data, you can have an undergraduate data analyst work on your project, with professional guidance, for up to 12 weeks. Project sponsors must be able to describe their needs as a set of questions that can be answered with available data, and must be able to meet with the interns at their site for 1 hour per week. Projects must have a social goal or benefit. We’re currently running two projects, and expect to be running three or four more this summer. If your organization needs data analysis this summer, please contact the Data Library Director, Eric Busboom at (619) 363-2607 or eric@sandiegodata.org.