How data is being harnessed to tackle some of the biggest challenges our planet is facing? At BcnAnalytics we are organizing an informative meet-up series exploring the vital role of data in the sustainability movement.
In our events we will feature thought leaders and industry experts who are leveraging data to create a more sustainable future. They will share their experiences and inspire us in the path towards Data-Driven Solutions for a More Sustainable World. We will cover a broad variety of topics such as decarbonization, predictive modeling for climate risk, blue economy and many others.
Our first event will be about the role data in the Decarbonization. Where are we now? How does the future look like? What is the role of Agriculture? Can Data help to accelerate Decarbonization? According to International Energy Agency (IEA), global energy-related CO2 emissions grew in 2022 by 0.9%, or 321 million tonnes, reaching a new high of more than 36.8 billion tonnes. Emissions still remain on an unsustainable growth trajectory, and experts are calling for stronger actions to accelerate the clean energy transition to meet energy and climate goals.
In this first event we will have Anne-Lise Laurain (Incubatenergy Europe) and Pablo Rosado (Our World in Data) as speakers.
Event will be on June 19th at Adevinta offices (Barcelona) and will start at 19h. We will open doors at 18:30. Do not be late!
After the talks, food and drinks will be provided so we all have time for some networking and follow-up discussions.
While women account for roughly 55% of university graduates their presence in STEM-related sectors like software development, engineering or analytics is significantly lower. According to various surveys from WEF, Global Gender Gap Report and BCG, women make up only between 15% to 22% of all data science professionals.
In BcnAnalytics we want to reflect on the gender gap in the field of Data Analytics and Data Science. Why is this happening? What can we do about it? So we are organizing an event that will focus on Gender Gap.
As speakers, we will have Elisenda Bou-Balust (co-founder and CTO at Vilynx, now Head of Apple Media Knowledge) and Marta Cardona (Data Lead at Holaluz).
After the talks food and drinks will be provided so we all have time for some networking and follow-up discussions.
From March 25th to April 1st, we organized a Datathon Against Racism. Several teams had to build a model to classify text messages as racist or as not racist. We had great learnings and tons of fun.
Now we want to share some of the great work done during the Datathon and we have asked three of the teams to share the technical approach they took to build their NLP models and also the insights they were able to generate.
We will also explain how we prepared the Datathon with more emphasis on how built the dataset (which we will make publicly available).
When: June 28th, from 18h to 20:30
Where: Adevinta offices in Barcelona (Carrer de la Ciutat de Granada, 150).
If you want to attend in persona, please register here. You will also be able to join online (we will provide the link in the coming days)
We are pleased to announce our next event “Causal Inference – Part I” on November 25th, 19h at Movistar Centre. Doors will open at 18:45.
Machine learning models or A/B testing are useful methods to make business decisions. But sometimes they are not feasible or present some limitations. Moreover, in many cases, we need to address questions such as: what would have happened if instead of doing X we had done Y? Can we have an estimate of the effect of one variable into another? In these cases, causal inference becomes the best option. And unsurprisingly, companies such as Uber are using causal inference as part of their data science efforts.
We are organizing two events to properly discuss the potential of causal inference and when it makes sense to apply it. In this first session, Bartek Skorulski and Aleix Ruiz de Villa will show the whole spectrum of causality, from AB tests to causal inference. You can register here
Aleix Ruiz de Vila holds a Ph.D. in mathematics. He has been head of data science at LaVanguardia, SCRM – Lidl, and Onna. He’s a co-organizer of Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup and board member of Societat Catalana de Matemàtiques. He currently teaches at BData and Uoc and he is a data science consultant specialized in causal inference. Check https://medium.com/tag/casual-causal-inference/latest for an introduction to causal inference
Bartek Skorulski, Data Scientist and Ph.D. in Dynamical System. He works as a Senior Data Scientist, Recommender System Lead in Telefonica Innovation Alpha. Previously, he was working as Staff Insight Analyst in Schibsted, Data Science Team Lead in Lidl-SCRM and Data Scientist in King. Moreover, he has many years of experience as an academic researcher and teacher. Now he collaborates with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, University of Barcelona and Kschool teaching Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Data Management courses. He is also co-organizer of Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup.
La Societat Catalana de Matemàtiques conjuntament amb la Societat Catalana d’Estadística organitza una jornada dedicada a promoure l’activitat de les matemàtiques i l’estadística en el món empresarial. El títol d’aquesta jornada és La Funció de les Dades. Les places són limitades i cal enregistrar-se prèviament en aquest enllaç.
La primera part de la jornada (matí) estarà formada per tallers d’una hora que tenen l’objectiu de donar eines, algunes més conegudes i d’altres de menys, que ajudin a les empreses a treballar amb les seves dades.
En la segona part (tarda) tindrem xerrades amb gent del món empresarial que ens explicarà la seva visió i experiència al voltant de l’ús de les matemàtiques i l’estadística en el món empresarial.
La Jornada tindrà lloc el 14 de novembre a la sala Prat de la Riba, IEC. Carrer del Carme, 47.
In the last months we had two great events and now you can watch online both of them.
The first event was held on January 21st and we discussed if Barcelona can become a European hub for Advanced Analytics and Big Data. As speakers we had Josep Maria Martorell (Associate Director at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center) and Òscar Sala (mVentures Director at the Mobile World Capital Barcelona organization). You can watch it in this link below.
The second event was held on February 14th (Valentine Day!!) and we reviewed how Analytics can play a role in Sports (are we close to a Money Ball world?) As speakers we had Sergi Oliva (Senior Director, Analytics & Strategy at Philadelphia 76ers) and Javier Fernandez (Head of Sports Analytics at FC Barcelona). You can watch in this link below.
We are pleased to announce our next event “Sports Analytics” on February 14th, 19h at Movistar Centre. Doors will open at 18:45. You can register here.
In this session we will focus on how Analytics can play a role in Sports. Are we close to a Money Ball world? As speakers we will have Sergi Oliva (Senior Director, Analytics & Strategy at Philadelphia 76ers) and Javier Fernandez (Head of Sports Analytics at FC Barcelona).
This event could not be possible without the collaboration of Movistar Centre.
In the last months we have seen that Ethics has emerged as an extremely sensitive topic for Data and Analytics community. Most likely, one of the main drivers of this wave of concern was Facebook scandal: Mark Zuckerberg (founder and CEO of Facebook) had to testify in front of US Congress about how his company handles its users’ data and how this could have influenced results in recent elections in several countries. But Facebook is not the only company whose practices are under scrutiny. Tones of questions have also been raised regarding how much personal data Google collects and how this is being used: according to Guillaume Chaslot (an ex-Google engineer), the Youtube algorithm “does not appear to be optimising for what is truthful, or balanced, or healthy for democracy”.
In other words, we are talking not only about privacy but also on how data could even threaten our political system. As Cathy O’Neil writes in her must-read book Weapons of math destruction, “the math-powered applications powering the data economy were based on choices made by fallible human beings. Some of these choices were no doubt made with the best intentions. Nevertheless, many of the models encoded human prejudice, misunderstanding and bias into the software systems that increasingly managed our lives. Like gods, these mathematical models are opaque (…) Their verdicts, even wrong or harmful, were beyond dispute or appeal. And they tended to punish the poor and the oppressed in our society, while making the rich richer”.
As Data-Driven professionals we cannot ignore this inconvenient truth and must address it. This is one of the reasons we at BcnAnalytics organised a session to discuss about Data & Ethics. As speakers we had Carlos Castillo (Distinguished Research Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and Gemma Galdon (Founder at Eticas Research & Consulting and Researcher at Universitat de Barcelona).
Carlos focused his talk on algorithmic discrimination. He initially reviewed the concept of discrimination from a philosophical perspective and then explained the concept of group discrimination, which means “disadvantageous treatment to an individual because he or she belongs to a specific socially salient group”. According to Carlos a further step is statistical discrimination which can be observed “when group discrimination happens because of some statistical belief, which means that someone has certain data, has looked at this data and based on statistics extracted from this data has decided to treat someone worse than another person”. After reviewing these concepts, Carlos raised the key issue: machine learning algorithms can discriminate.
Why is that? Machine learning systems take data and extract statistical beliefs from this data and therefore they are enabled to discriminate some individuals, regardless of intention and animosity. The key aspect is the consequences of this algorithm in terms of treating worst a person because he or she belongs to a group. Carlos emphasized that to avoid this discrimination, models need to optimize not only accuracy but also need to look at “the risk of two different populations of not getting the same outcome”. Carlos also highlighted how important is that systems are transparent: “if you get a negative outcome, you have to have a way to challenge this decision in a way that is effective… If I am denied a loan or parole, I need to have a way of effectively challenge the decision to say the systems was wrong in my case”.
Gemma started her talk quoting “The Fall of Public Man” from Richard Sennett. “In a city full of sensors and cameras and surveillance everywhere, where would Romeo and Juliet fall in love?”. From Gemma’s perspective, technology is changing our lives and we really need to ask ourselves: Why we are investing in technology? What kind of societies are these technologies creating or promoting? Are we building the cities that we want to build? Do we want to live in a world where everything is remembered? Do we want to live in a world where we can never forget? As she mentioned: “for the first time in history, forgetting is more expensive than remembering. Everything we do is recorded by a camera or a sensor”. Gemma, then, started to review real cases on non-expected outcomes of certain technologies. For instance, smart borders based on biometrics. They were not part of the legislative debate because they were seen “as technical amendments”, but currently biometrics have become our IDs, and certain individuals self-mutilate when they want to hide their identities. In other words, their bodies became their enemies.
Gemma asked herself: “How can we hide behind a technical amendment? And what about false positives? There is no redress mechanism”. According to her the most burning issue is we, as society, did not think technology could fail. But it fails. And this triggers the key issue: the way we do technology is very irresponsible and no one is facing the consequences of their actions, the consequences of their false positives…which might be human rights. Gemma ended her speech highlighting the fact we need to start thinking how technology is impacting our civilization: “we have the responsibility to decide how we build a social-technical infrastructure that is responsible and desirable for our generation and the next generations”.
A few years ago, when we created Bcn Analytics our vision was Barcelona can become a European analytics hub. Our ambition was to foster that different members of community (business, academia, data professionals) could meet and share experiences and knowledge. Now, 3 years after, we feel proud of we accomplished. We have organised 10 meet-ups where fantastic speakers from great organisations have shared their expertise: we had guests from Google, New York University, King.com, La Caixa, Telefonica, Schibsted, Social Point, BBVA, IPSOS or Vistaprint, among others. We also had the chance to organise two Datathons with Social Point so data scientists could compete to win some prizes while having fun with data.
But when we created BcnAnalytics we also wanted to contribute to make Barcelona a better city. We truly believe data can also be for good. So, we are proud to announce we are co-organising the first “Barcelona Pollution Datathon”. What is the Datathon about? First let me share some data points. According to this article 95% of people in Barcelona are breathing more particle pollution than is recommended by World Health Organisation. If you think about, this is scary. In fact air pollution in Barcelona rises by 48% on public transport strike days, study reveals. We thought we could do something to raise awareness on pollution levels and also get data scientists involved. And we decided to co-organise an event with CCCB, BSC, Leitat and Eurecat. That was the spurn of this first “Barcelona Pollution Datathon”.
The Datathon is going to be part of the exhibition “After the End of the World” which is being organised by CCCBB. Participants of the datathon will have to build a prediction model on Barcelona pollution levels. We have more than 3.000€ in prizes thanks to our sponsors Social Point, Holaluz and Gauss & Neumann. We also have the support of Mobile World Congress.
