Data science workshop introduces students to programming, teaches valuable skills

Assistant Director and Manager for Systems and Networking Research Technologist Kirk Anne hosted a data science workshop for the programming and data science club on Sunday April 9, in which students analyzed a dataset to determine whether passengers on the Titanic were likely to survive. 

The workshop allowed students to become familiar with data acquisition, cleaning, analysis and presentation. 

Students of all programming abilities were welcome at the workshop. Kirk and members of the programming and data science club were available an hour before the event to assist students in downloading the necessary programming software to participate. 

“We’re working on trying to find ways to expose students to programming and data science,” Anne said. “Even in the humanities and history and English—these types of techniques are being used for research. This spans all disciplines and the ability to work with data—to present a cohesive and coherent argument—is important and these are the tools to do so.”

During the workshop, students examined several variables that influenced survival rate on the Titanic: the passenger class, gender, age, whether the passenger had siblings or a spouse on board, the number of parents and children on board, the ticket number, the passage fare, the cabin number and where each passenger entered onto the ship. 

Attendees typed a series of commands on their screens to access the data and then explored multiple methods to analyze the data, with Anne showing them how to use the Python programming language. Programming and data science club president and mathematics major senior Walter Gerych explained how to use the R programming language. 

When evaluating data, Kirk described how there are a variety of factors one can examine: the standard deviation, the minimum, first quartile, median, third quartile and the maximum. Anne suggested using the median, opposed to the average when examining data.

“If you have a billionaire in your town, the average income might be $4 million—but that doesn’t make sense,” Anne said. “The median is usually a slightly better representation for the outliers. If you have one big outlier or one super small outlier, it messes up the data.”

After Anne showed how to cross-examine the data with a series of graphs and tables, attendees found that passengers ranging from 20-40 years of age were more likely to survive when considering age, and women had approximately a 74 percent chance of survival. 

Anne also explained that families might have been less likely to survive, as they focused on staying together and on finding each other before the ship sunk, rather than on finding a lifeboat. 

Students learned about decision trees during the programming workshop. This algorithmic method helps individuals evaluate data by using a graph that calculates possible outcomes, costs and utility in a tree-similar model. 

Anne stressed at the workshop that when using such a model, it is essential to check whether the data is inserted correctly. He explained that there are limitations in solely using this method for analysis, as it is important to think critically about the data and on other potential factors while investigating any data set. 

The club’s vice president and cofounder mathematics major senior Aidan Murphy encourages students who are interested in programming and data analysis to not only attend workshops hosted by the club or its meetings, but to also take the time to actively use these skills independently. 

“Just like learning any other language, unless you are naturally adept at it, just sitting in the class for Spanish or something isn’t going to be enough to learn the language,” he said. “You have to actively use it, you have to dynamically use it for the best results, and that’s what we hope to have our students do.”

Knight of the Week: Drew Madarasz

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Senior communication major Drew Madarasz is a key asset to the Geneseo men’s lacrosse team, as he is a figure for the underclassmen to look up to. After graduation, Madarasz plans to use the skills he has learned at Geneseo in the digital marketing field. (Annie Renaud/News Editor)

Geneseo men’s lacrosse’s defensive midfielder Drew Madarasz began playing lacrosse in first grade in Smithtown, New York. He is the third sibling in his family to attend Geneseo as well as the second to play a sport at the college. 

“My brother played soccer here and really enjoyed playing a sport at Geneseo,” Madarasz said. “My sister also had a very positive experience, so when it came time to pick a college, I honestly always felt like I was going to come here.”  

Madarasz originally picked up lacrosse because many of his family members and friends also played the sport. Madarasz’s family-friend headed the lacrosse youth program in Smithtown, and they taught him everything he knows about the game, according to Madarasz. 

In addition to playing lacrosse, Madarasz also played soccer and various other sports growing up, each for a season or two. Madarasz decided to focus primarily on lacrosse and soccer, however, due to the significant amount of time required to play both sports year-round on travel and school teams. 

While playing on Geneseo’s lacrosse team, Madarasz explained that he has thoroughly enjoyed forming relationships with the other players and that the team is close. 

“All the kids that I play with are some of the best kids I have ever met. Honestly, it’s a very tight-knit group,” Madarasz said. “We’re all one big family and everyone gets along really well, and I can’t even imagine my experience at Geneseo without being on the lacrosse team.”

Madarasz is currently studying communication and when he graduates he hopes to work in digital marketing in either New York City or on Long Island. 

During his time at Geneseo, Madarasz has already obtained experience in the marketing field by running the lacrosse team’s social media, Max’s Ink Tattoos & Piercing’s social media as well as participating in the Adopt-A-Business program throughout his junior year. In this program, Geneseo and local businesses in Livingston County partner students with a business based own the students’ credentials and interests. These students work to improve the businesses’ presence on social media and overall marketing techniques. 

Madarasz worked with Livingston Lanes and Pub and ran their Instagram account in addition to hosting a fundraiser for Matthew Hutchinson ‘16 and Kelsey Annese ‘16 after their deaths. 

When Madarasz is not attending practices five days a week or studying, he enjoys watching sports in his free time, primarily basketball and lacrosse. 

Madarasz is proud of the collective leadership the lacrosse team has established among the senior class after the team has become more focused and committed to the winning process with the hiring of a new coach.

“The senior class is a collective leader within itself. Everyone adopted the role as leaders on the team, especially with the new coach,” Madarasz said. “One of his biggest things this year was having the seniors change the culture of previous years with our old coach. So basically, he just relied on us to issue a new culture for our program and change it all together.”

Madarasz hopes that the foundation this year’s team has set will serve as a model for future Geneseo lacrosse teams. 

“The coach always says that our legacy will be the success of the team five, 10 or 15 years from now,” Madarasz said. “He said all the success for future teams will go back on our shoulders because we’re the ones that were able to make the change to the culture.”

Art festival spreads creativity across campus

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(Ellayna Fredericks/Staff Photographer)

The Geneseo campus showcased several student art pieces as part of the Campus Canvas: As We Are festival. Various exhibitions, readings and performances will last until March 31 as a way for students to have a platform to display their artwork and to express their opinions about the campus climate as a whole. 

Campus Canvas’ central project is the Sound Hub, located in the MacVittie College Union, where individuals can record their responses to prompts. Such prompts include whether an individual is happy and what they love or hate about Geneseo. The prompts are given to inspire the individual to provide some type of narration. These sound recordings are then played along with videos shot by students of landmarks around Geneseo, creating an exciting contrast between the images and the students’ monologues. 

“The idea behind that is to really present Geneseo without necessarily editing people’s thoughts. We’re not trying to clean up Geneseo’s image at all,” English creative writing major and collaborator on the Sound Hub project senior Evan Goldstein said. “We’re trying to have people engage with what other people are really thinking more deeply.”

Also featured in the Union is Geneseo Environmental Organization’s trash sculpture, which shows the average annual trash output in the United States versus the average annual trash output of a person who recycles and composts. The sculpture includes a list of items that can be composted. The goal of such a visible and tangible display is to generate critical introspections in how one treats the environment. 

The Integrated Science Center is housing another interactive art project, as designed by English creative writing and geology double major junior Elizabeth Pellegrino, geology major senior Mark Ling and geology major junior Allison Bargabos. These students created a display of various rocks in which individuals can write down a thought on the rock, which will then be placed in their depositional environment. 

“It kind of plays off this idea of geologic time and the fact that it takes quite a while to erode and to get rid of thoughts, and that it’s a very gradual process,” Pellegrino said. 

In addition, English major senior Kiaya Rose Dilsner-Lopez’s Edgar Fellows capstone project entitled “Mezclar” has been relocated from the Kinetic Gallery to the English Department office for the Campus Canvas: As We Are festival. 

Students also had the opportunity to attend a photography workshop on Monday March 27 with activist in the Lesbian Avengers Group and photographer and videographer Carolina Kroon. During the workshop, Kroon offered feedback on strategies to convey context of an event through photography and the importance of editing and experimenting with lighting and distance. Lyric essayist and lecturer of creative writing at Columbia College T Clutch Fleischmann provided a literary reading of a current manuscript that they are finalizing as well as a recently published article of theirs on Wednesday March 29 as part of the college’s Campus Canvas events. In Fleischmann’s work, they explore the phenomenon of being gender fluid as well as questions that arise about sex and the body. Felischmann’s pieces beautifully experiment with language and form and invited listeners to feel close to the present moment. 

To bring the Campus Canvas events to a close, students will present the play “It Can’t Happen Here” on Friday March 31 on the college green. The production is led by English adolescent education major junior William Antonelli and professor of theater Melanie Blood and grapples with the rise of a fascist dictator. 

Event advisor and assistant professor of English Lytton Smith hopes that these events provide students with an opportunity to engage with the artistic community on campus.

“I think it’s really important that art becomes a way of engaging with each other on campus, in particular at a time when there’s the threat of cutting arts funding,” Smith said. “Citizenship without art is a very dull citizenship and a very limited way of thinking and rethinking the world.”

Spring concert band prompts concerns about selection process

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Geneseo Campus Activities Board has chosen Catfish and the Bottlmen for Geneseo’s spring concert (lead singer Van McCann pictured above). As a result of this choice, some students are concerned about how effective GCAB’s selection process has been in taking students’ feedback into account when choosing the artists each year. Students explained that they would like more diverse artists offered as well as a more transparent selection process. (Tomas Adams/Creative Commons)

Geneseo Campus Activities Board announced on Monday March 20 that the band Catfish and the Bottlemen will headline this year’s spring concert on April 30 at 6:15 p.m. in the Kuhl Gymnasium. The concert will be offered free to students. 

Following the announcement, students had various reactions regarding the chosen artist and GCAB’s process in choosing this artist. 

In the fall semester, GCAB sent out multiple surveys to students asking for feedback on what genres and artists they preferred, according to Student Association Director of Student Programming Molly Downey. Afterward, GCAB hosted an open forum in which students could vote for the top artists and approximately 15-25 students attended. 

“Although we didn’t get a huge turnout this year, I think we had a passionate group of people, and that could be even better than having 100 people who don’t really care so much,” GCAB Concert Coordinator sophomore Nicole Rizzo said. 

After the forum, GCAB used a booking agent through the company Concert Ideas to contact potential artists, asking prices for the artists and negotiating the date and time. Geography major junior Benjamin Freiman said that he believes that in order to get a bigger picture of what artists students want, GCAB should have hosted more forums and made the artist choosing process more transparent. 

“If I could give any recommendation to GCAB, it would be hold more than just one forum, especially if the forum that they do hold is very under attended,” Freiman said. “I would also recommend to be more transparent throughout the entire selection process as opposed to just giving us little bits of information, like, maybe at five months.”

Freiman was also concerned about the lack of diverse artists Geneseo has hosted over the years, citing that most of the artists have been indie-rock white male bands. 

“The only time there was a hip-hop artist here [within the last few years], it was a white hip-hop artist,” he said. “There are so many wonderful artists of color who are touring and who want to play college shows, and we chose an obscure band who no one seems to be very excited about.”

Freiman highlighted several hip-hop artists of color that fall under GCAB’s budget of $50,000 that he would have preferred to see perform at Geneseo, including several members of the Wu-Tang Clan performing as solo artists and other popular artists such as Ja Rule, Danny Brown and Vince Staples. 

Accounting major sophomore Brooke Monfalcone echoed Freiman’s sentiment, saying that students would be more inclined to attend the spring concert if their style of music was represented. 

Students also criticized GCAB for its methods of publicizing the student forums and surveys. Psychology major sophomore Meghana Kakarla explained that sending students emails about regarding opportunities for feedback can often get lost in students’ inboxes due to the significant amount of emails students receive. 

Valley Entertainment Coordinator for GCAB junior Leila Sedigh, who is in the process of organizing the opening act for the spring concert, said that she hopes that students take action to allow their voices to be heard in the future at the open forums provided for them instead of complaining after the artist has been chosen. 

“I feel like if students are going to complain and want to have a voice—and we want to hear their voices—they need to show up and let us know instead of just going on social media,” Sedigh said. “Otherwise, we can’t really change anything other than doing what we think students would like.”

Geneseo professor proposes Mars landing site

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Assistant professor of geological sciences Nicholas Warner and his research team proposed a landing site for the Mars rover mission set to take place in 2020. The mission will investigate whether there was once life on Mars. (Annalee Bainnson/Assoc. Photo Editor)

Geneseo assistant professor of geological sciences Nicholas Warner and two other members of his research team proposed a landing site for the next Mars rover NASA mission in 2020 on Feb. 10 and helped to determine the location of the landing site.

Warner and his team’s proposed landing site—called the Eberswalde Delta—was voted the third best landing site out of a total of eight sites by fellow members of the conference. The team chose the Eberswalde Delta because there is evidence that this area originally consisted of a river and a lake, which could have been home to forms of life such as bacteria. If this bacteria was present, it may be preserved in the sediments, according to Warner.

When members of the internal NASA landing site working group and the instrument team selected the final three landing sites to move on to the last stage of evaluations, Warner and his team were not included.

Individuals presented on these sites on a voluntary basis, according to a phone interview with professor at Western Washington University and fellow team member Melissa Rice. During the meetings, presenters explained the scientific merits of the landing site, Warner said.

“We had scientists who have been studying their favorite spot on Mars for decades, and we also had a high school student who just felt strongly about one particular site and everybody was given time to speak,” Rice said. “In a way, it was kind of like a town hall meeting for Mars.”

The three landing sites that have advanced to the final stage of evaluations are the Columbia Hills, Northeast Syrtis Major and the Jezero Crater. Warner said that the criteria used to evaluate the three final landing sites for the Mars rover included whether there are a variety of rocks present in these sites, whether there are signs of potential life and whether there are significant non-biological aspects to investigate, such as the site’s climate and history. 

In addition, NASA evaluated the potential challenges present in these regions that could impact the rover, such as limited driving distance and temperature extremes. Part of the reason the Eberswalde Delta did not advance to the final stage was due to NASA’s concerns about the area’s swings in temperature, according to Warner.

NASA will conduct missions in the future to obtain the samples that will be collected in the Mars 2020 mission, Warner said. 

“This is something that’s brand new about this rover,” Warner said. “It’s not just going to look for life, it’s going to take little drill samples and put them in a container for 10-20 years from now when another mission will come and return them.”  

Geneseo students have worked on a variety of projects similar to Warner’s research, Warner said. Currently, he has a student who is working on mapping for the Insight mission, which will travel to Mars in 2018. 

In addition, other students have helped with Warner’s presentation of the Eberswalde Delta, and Warner also has students propose projects in his classes in which they themselves suggest a particular landing site to send a mission. 

Warner believes these missions engage members of the public due to their objectives to search for life on other planets.

“The ultimate goal is really to find evidence that life was able to evolve on another planet independent of Earth,” Warner said. “So that’s the critical driving question for the Mars program.”

Associate news editor Malachy Dempsey contributed reporting to this article.