Data Science Academy Camp 1: Introduction to Data Science

COMPFEST 15, Depok — On August 9th, 2023, the Data Science Academy (DSA) officially kicked off. The commencement of DSA marks the beginning of COMPFEST 15 Academy. Following a rigorous selection process, the DSA COMPFEST 15 team has chosen 10 groups to participate in this year’s DSA. This year’s DSA is being conducted online through the Zoom platform.

In this rapidly evolving era of information, data has become the chain that links various aspects of our lives. Data, generated from diverse sources like digital devices, sensors, social platforms, and business transactions, holds immense potential to unveil valuable insights that guide smarter decision-making and innovative solutions. DSA presents expert speakers with strong backgrounds in data science to provide participants with a direct and thorough learning experience in data science from the professionals themselves. Let’s delve into the highlights of DSA week 1!

DAY 1

Ardya Dipta Nandaviri, Head of Data Science & Business Insight at PT. Kalbe Farma was the speaker for the opening day of Camp 1. Ardiya discussed the essential skills required for a data scientist, data engineer, machine learning engineer, and data analyst. He emphasized the significance of a sound business strategy before recruiting a data scientist. Ardya’s presentation titled “Introduction to Data Science in Business” was delivered articulately, sparking high enthusiasm among the participants.

The engagement of the participants was evident during the quiz and Q&A sessions. Participants actively answered questions posed by the organizers and bombarded Ardya with thought-provoking inquiries during the Q&A segment. Ardya also emphasized the importance of a data scientist’s direct engagement in the field to understand real-world conditions.

DAY 2

On the second day of DSA, Emanuel Dave, a data scientist at Tokopedia, took the stage. Equally engaging, Dave presented “Statistics in Data Science.” He began by introducing the concept of statistics, followed by a role-play session.

During the role-play, participants were asked to act as consultants for a store named Tokokopi. Given a table describing customer ages and frequency for each age group, participants were required to provide insights on what steps Tokokopi should take to enhance sales. After the role-play, Dave continued with his presentation, involving participants through questions and seeking their opinions. Similar to the previous day, this session concluded with a quiz and Q&A segment.

DAY 3

The third day featured Vanya Valindria, a Senior AI Research Engineer at Bukalapak, discussing “Data Cleaning and Preprocessing.” Data cleaning involves removing or correcting erroneous, damaged, improperly formatted, duplicated, or incomplete data in a dataset. Why is data cleaning crucial? According to Vanya, a model’s performance relies on data quality, making data cleaning essential. Data cleaning minimizes errors, enhances data accuracy and consistency, and avoids unnecessary values.

Unlike the previous days, day three featured a hands-on session where participants worked on the dataset from the store Ratususu and performed data cleaning using Python libraries, guided by Vanya.

DAY 4

Day four of DSA featured Bahrul Ilmi Nasution, who works in Data Analytics at Jakarta Smart City, as the speaker. On this occasion, Bahrul delved further into “Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)”. EDA is a pivotal workflow step in data science, bridging the gap between data collection/cleansing and model creation.

EDA aims to maximize knowledge from data, uncover hidden patterns or structures, determine key variables within a pattern, detect anomalies, help formulate hypotheses, and assist in selecting appropriate statistical analysis techniques.

Following Bahrul’s presentation, hands-on sessions and case studies were conducted. The case studies were group assignments spanning 120 minutes, and one group had the opportunity to present their work.

Interview Session

After the conclusion of Data Science Academy Camp 1, I had the opportunity to interview one of the DSA groups, the “POTTERHEADS,” composed of three members: Debora, Zalfa, and Dea.

At the start of the interview, I asked each participant to provide one word describing DSA Camp 1. Their answers were: insightful, cool, and fun! They joined DSA to deepen their knowledge of data science, having previously studied the field. Although they faced challenges during the selection process, working in groups helped them overcome them. They shared their experiences during DSA Camp 1 and hoped to improve their data understanding after the event. The POTTERHEADS thanked COMPFEST 15 for bringing in expert speakers and mentors.

DSA will continue in the upcoming weeks and there are still other series of COMPFEST events. So, keep monitoring our journey through our social media accounts, @compfest on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our site, compfest.id. For more excitement from COMPFEST Academy, read the complete articles on our Medium page. (Editorial Marketing/Fauzan)