We've been collaborating with potential customers to see how our data science skills and tools can help address some of the challenges with their businesses. We also got sidetracked with a separate non-profit initiative to help protect the homes of over 100 sailors in Miami Beach, Florida.
Using Data Science for the Public Benefit
We've working over the past few months to use data analysis and research to influence public policy and officials to provide solutions to better address the housing crisis. The City of Miami Beach and many other municipalities have taken steps to criminalize homelessness rather than address the underlying causes of the lack of permanent affordable housing in our county. The sailors being affected have lived on their boats with their families for years, have been a part of the community, and are now facing intense pressure from the City of Miami Beach to remove them from their homes and make accessing basic necessities like food and water on shore illegal. We gathered data from multiple sources on affordable housing, environmental impacts of boats, and the relative cost of housing in Miami Beach versus living on a sailboat. We sent our data to Senators in Tallahassee and local news outlets to make a data driven logical arguments regarding why the sailors should be allowed to keep their homes. We were able to defeat a 200 yard anchoring limitation area in Senate Bill 192, which would have made it illegal for these individuals to live on sailboats near the shores of Miami Beach.
Automation Course Pilot using Python and Excel
We're working on developing an Automation Course due to interest from many users about how to automate tasks at their jobs and to streamline work processes. This course will dive into automating common tasks at work that may be of high value to business users - cleaning and manipulating data, daily reports, visuals, creating features from data, pivot tables, macros in Excel, ETL using Pandas in Python.
Over the next month we will be working with students to gather feedback on the most useful aspects of the course that can improve their workflow and job performance. This course will eventually be posted on Udemy for all future students to access.
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