This morning was our field trip to the Metro center downtown. It was the first time the rest of the team got to meet Matthew and hear from him all the nitty gritty details of the Access buses and King County's Paratransit system. He had prepared a whole presentation for us, but it took much longer than I think he anticipated just because we kept stopping him to ask questions and clarify different aspects of the system. While I think he appreciated our interactions, I felt like I left once again with this sense of being overwhelmed by all the different parts and points that come together for this project. I really wish there had been more time at the end to specifically ask more questions (yes, I think we still had more questions), but we were already going over time by the end of his presentation. During our visit we also got a tour of the call center so we were able to see how it is all laid out and how each booking is processed and put into the system before being optimized on a route.
    In the afternoon we had a presentation through DSSG about different blogging practices, since the DSSG interns also have to blog about their work and experiences on the project. Since I've already been blogging, I considered skipping it since I didn't think I would get much out of it, but it was actually super interesting and informative. I was really glad I went!  The presenter was Jim Davenport, who writes and updates the blog "If We Assume", which if you haven't read before I highly recommend checking it out. He talked to us a lot about the importance of sharing ideas with a larger community and the value of having a space where you have the freedom to try new things and follow out ideas that you are really passionate about or that sound interesting to you.  

    We did a lot of work trying to figure out what our different goals for the project were. After much brainstorming and discussing different aspects of the project, we finally came up with a plan where each member had one specific question they were going to try to tackle and answer.

     Most of my day today was just going to different presentations through DSSG. First off, we started the morning with a presentation that outlined what exactly was data science and why it has become more and more important recently. I really liked this presentation because I thought it was informative and relevant. Also, with buzz words like data science I feel like it can be really helpful to just take a step back and look at what they really mean whenever we can. 
   Next there was a presentation on Amazon Web Services. I have never had to use AWS before, so all their information was new to me, but it was a bit too much information for me to digest at once without specific examples of how and when I would use each part. This session felt very long to me, and I don't feel like I got too much out of it, but we might be using some of the Amazon Web Services later in our project, so maybe I'll be grateful we had it later on. 
   The last presentation was shorter but I didn't think it really gave me any new information that I didn't already know, so I probably could have skipped it. The tutorial was basically the beginner's guide to github, but while I've only had limited experience with github, I still have had enough where the tutorial only served as a refresher for terms and concepts that I already know and have used. I will say though that I would recommend the link to anyone else I know who has not used github before because it makes it very easy to get started and understand t he main concepts.

    What an exciting day! This was the first time I got to meet the rest of the team that I'll be working with this summer. To clarify, I am being funded through the DREU, which gives students like me opportunities to work on research projects through bigger universities like UW. However, the project that my mentor is having me work on is also receiving help through the Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) program at the eScience lab on campus. Therefore, while I'm not being funded through DSSG, the rest of the other teammates working on the Paratransit Project will all be DSSG interns. There are also three other projects that are working through the DSSG program this summer, so the morning started off with each project lead introducing their project and then being introduced to which interns will be working with them. Anat introduced our project and paratransit, and afterwards we got to meet with the rest of our teammates. We ended up talking in a big group with the sidewalks project*, which was good but we didn't have as much opportunity then to relay all the specific details that are encompassed in our project. I'm sure we'll talk about it more tomorrow though.
     In the afternoon they had a session on COMPASS social media training that Anat and I also attended. It aimed at explaining the importance of sharing your professional work and questions through social media sites, and it explained a little bit on how to get started and where. For me, it was informative in that I learned about different platforms where people are being social in a professional setting, but I am not sure I'm really going to use any of them just yet.




*The sidewalks project is one of the other three projects receiving help through the DSSG program. The project aims to make a map that shows which sidewalks, crosswalks, and other paths are accessible (based on ADA guidelines) for getting around in the city. Anat mentored Nick and the team that initially started the project this past year, so she has close ties to him and the project. Also their project is closely related to ours because they are also using a lot of mapping data and trying to implement routing algorithms.