The Data Science Institute (DSI) is proud to form the institutional cornerstone of the active data science community at the London School of Economics.
As part of the DSI's mission to champion data science, we periodically shine our data science spotlight on good examples from across the LSE community.
The first individual that we focused on is 2020/21 MSc Applied Social Data Science student Ramshankar Yadhunath. Ramshankar was the Co-Head of Education at the LSESU Data Science Society during 2020-21.
Having become part of LSE in September 2020, Ramshankar is deeply passionate about data-driven decision making and the use of data for good. This belief is shown in Ramshankar's articles published by Towards Data Science.
'Leveraging Data for Social Good'.
This article explains how Ramshankar led a small team in using empirical data to benefit a rural village in Northern Punjab, India. The team explored the question of whether people from Dodeneer were suffering from acute water shortage, using Python to analyse the data. After cleaning this data and comparison with UN standards, Ramshankar's team found basic individual water requirements not met in almost twice the number of those households where these requirements were met.
'Saving Animal Lives with Data'.
The use of data in animal shelters may not be the most obvious use that comes to mind. However, in this article Ramshankar uses his experience of working at People for Animals in Bangalore to outline how data could be used to improve the efficiency of operations at these shelters. The article details the potential for data-driven practices to raise the standard of care provided to these animals. A follow up article describing his attempts at improving the quality of data at the shelter has also been published.
'How to Make a Data Analytics Project That People Want to Read'.
Data science is not only about good models and good methods, however. For data science to have a positive impact for the betterment of society, research must gain attention of its reader. Ramshankar offers eight tips within this article to "turn heads" and showcase knowledge effectively.
Ramshankar can be contacted via LinkedIn and Twitter.