NIH Office of Data Science Strategy: Friday Before Pi Day

About this Class

On Friday, March 13, NIH’s Office of Data Science Strategy will host “Friday Before Pi Day,” a Friday-the-13th-inspired Pi Day celebration highlighting data science at NIH. The day’s events will include two opportunities to participate in friendly, Pi-themed presentation sessions: Scary stories about data and the lessons we can learn from them As part of the festivities, we’ll have a session dedicated to data horror stories: times we’ve gotten file names confused, wrestled with pesky bugs in our code, toiled over data formats, or lost a precious dataset. So, we want to hear from you! Send us your data horror story ideas and the lessons you’ve learned from them. Please limit all pitches to one paragraph. We’ll select 10 and work with you to develop your stories into engaging and entertaining 10-minute talks. Pi-tionary: 3:14-minute illustrated lightning talks This session will give teams or individuals the opportunity to share an illustrated elevator pitch for their lab’s or office’s work. Competitors will describe what they do in lay terms while sketching it out on the whiteboard. Your drawing doesn’t have to be a data visualization; the figure can be a simple pictorial representation of your project or office mission. If you or your team would like to showcase your work at NIH, please submit your title, ICO, and participant names. Contestants will compete against other teams in front of judges from the Pi Day audience, and the winning team will take home a pie! If you are interested in participating in either activity, please send your submissions by COB Thursday, February 13, to maryam.zaringhalam@nih.gov, indicating which session(s) you’d like to take part in. In addition to these presentations, the day’s activities will feature a keynote lecture from data scientist Rebecca Nugent, Ph.D., an award-winning professor of statistics and data science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where she holds the Stephen E. and Joyce Fienberg Professorship in Statistics & Data Science. Dr. Nugent’s keynote will focus on how data science is the “science of the people” and how data can be harnessed by everyone. There will also be Pi-related trivia, and, of course, pie! If you have any questions, please contact datascience@nih.gov