Almost Winter Solstice Party with Pythons!

Tampa Bay Data Scientists!

Let's celebrate a great year of data science talks with our fellow bay area Python groups (Tampa Bay Python and PyLadies).

We're having a pot-luck style party graciously hosted by Nielsen up in Oldsmar. Nice thing about Oldsmar: no long bridges to cross from Hillsborough or Pinellas!

We need our speaker's badge to get in though so we'll meet outside and go in as a group at about 6:10. We'll post a phone number in the comments for people that can't make it by then and maybe do quarter hour checks until 7 or so.

Let's use the comments to "plan" the pot-luck. If you can bring something, let us know what in the comments. No comments yet on 12/5, I'm starting to worry...!!!

We've never met at Nielsen before but I've been wanting to see the place for a while now. Very highly rated ;) If you've never heard of them, you won't know that's a bad joke...even though it's true.

https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/

In keeping with our Winter Solstice theme, we'll have a fun astronomy presentation by recent astronomy grad and new Nielsen data scientist Priya Lingutla!

If you've been working on the Gulf Coast JCFS volunteer project (now with MORE data!), this will be a good time for some informal progress discussions. If you have something you'd like to present (in a 5-minute lightning talk kind of way), reach out to me with a meetup message and I'll make sure we get you set up.

Priya will present on Gravitational Lensing using a basic Neural Net. First she'll introduce us to what gravitational lensing is and it's significance in astronomy (2-3 minutes). Then, she'll show us why using a neural net to classify a lensed object vs not lensed object works (2-3 minutes). Finally, she'll present a Jupyter notebook with the training, images, and accuracy scores of the two models (one with only two iterations that doesn't do well and one with 10 iterations that does much better). Her notebook will be available on GitHub at some point.

About Priya:

Priya Lingutla graduated from the University of Chicago in 2019 with a B.Sc. in Astrophysics and is currently a Data Science Associate in the Emerging Leaders Program at Nielsen. Having published a historical booklet for Yerkes Observatory and written several science articles for Argonne National Laboratory, Priya continues to be passionate about bridging the gap between science and the community. In her time at college, she also co-founded a women empowerment organization, Elevate UChicago, and aspires to always engage with, uplift, and learn from all in the community. In her free time, Priya enjoys running, drinking ridiculous amounts of coffee, and spending time with her kitten.