University of Maryland

Dealing with Missing Data in Education/Workforce Analysis – Data Literacy & Evidence Building

REGISTER January 30, 2024 The importance of high quality data and data access in creating evidence for policy making.   However, data that are systematically missing observations over time or for different groups of people can negatively impact the quality of that evidence.  Participants in a recent Executive Certificate class jointly offered by New York University and the […]

Job Quality Measures – Data Literacy & Evidence Building

REGISTER January 23, 2024 The importance of creating good quality jobs has been highlighted in much recent legislation, including the  Chips and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the InfrastructureInvestment and Jobs Act, as well as the renewal of existing legislation such as the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.  Participants in a recent Executive Certificate class jointly offered by New […]

SoDa Seed Grant Series: Correlating Population Demographics with Maryland’s County-Level Critical Infrastructure Vulnerabilities

Date: May 7, 2024 Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm Location: Zoom Abstract: Local government-controlled critical infrastructure relies on computer systems and is increasingly vulnerable to cyber-attacks that can disrupt its operation. This project aims to examine the relationship between cyber vulnerabilities in some critical infrastructure sectors in Maryland counties with available demographic factors to identify potential […]

SoDa Seed Grant Series: How Can Data Science Be Used For Racial Equity?

Date: April 9, 2024 Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm Location: Zoom Abstract: Data science methods are increasingly being applied to large-scale educational data, but there has been less attention on the possibility of algorithmic bias. In this presentation, we present several metrics used for algorithmic bias, discuss how proportions of racial groups impact the presence of […]

SoDa Seed Grant Series: Effective Few-Shot Learning for Constructs in Psychological and Social Science

Date: March 12, 2024 Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm Location: Zoom Abstract: The idea of a construct is central in the psychological and social sciences: constructs are abstract categories like empathy, misinformation, or benefits of social interaction that are operationalized in order to make them measurable. Social scientists spend an enormous amount of time and care […]

SoDa Seed Grant Series: Socio-Algorithmic Foundations of Trustworthy Recommendations

Date: February 13, 2024 Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm Location: Zoom Abstract: Social media newsfeeds shape what people see online but, due to the interplay between human and algorithmic bias, these systems often amplify low-quality information, like misinformation and conspiracy theories. For example, prior work has shown that ranking the news by (either predicted or achieved) […]

SoDa Seed Grant Series: Newspapers and the Lynching Story: Discoveries, Distortions, and Erasure, 1789-1963

Date: Tuesday, December 12, 2023Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pmLocation: Zoom   Abstract: Our project examines media coverage of lynching from 1789 to the current era. Researchers examined metadata of 60,000 pages of news coverage in the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America database and conducted a computational text analysis of a stratified sample. We find that some […]

New Executive Certificate in Data Literacy and Evidence Building

New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, the University of Maryland’s Social Data Science Center, and Accenture are delighted to announce a new Executive Certificate in Data Literacy and Evidence Building in conjunction with the Kentucky Center for Statistics and the Coleridge Initiative. The new first-of-its-kind not-for-credit Certificate draws on almost a decade’s successful experience to train […]

The SoDa Center is a proud sponsor of the 2023 NCHS Data Detectives Summer Camp

Established in 2016, Data Detectives Camp is a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) camp that teaches statistics rising 6th- and 7th-grade students. The camp is conducted by NCHS, which is part of CDC, in collaboration with the American Statistical Association, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics, CDC’s Disease Detectives Camp, University of […]

USDA / ERS & NASS Democratizing Data Joint Info Session

Tuesday, March 28, 2023: 12:00 PM EST The 2018  Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act charged federal agencies with engaging in meaningful ways with the public to better understand how government data assets are used.    The Economic Research Service and the National Agricultural Statistical Service have developed a new approach to understanding how their data are used that provides a more in-depth look that can […]


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