Sailing through a Highly Interactive Journey on Applied Data Science: HKU IDS Summer Course IDSS 2401 “Data Science For Societies”
Organized by HKU Musketeers Foundation Institute of Data Science and supported by the HKU Summer Institute, the Institute was delighted to host a batch of summer students in its first summer course, IDSS2401 – Data Science for Societies, between June 24 and July 5, 2024! We welcomed interested undergraduates with basic statistics and mathematics background across the Greater Bay Area and the globe, to join our two course instructors, HKU-100 IDS scholars including Professor Chao Huang (HKU IDS / Department of Computer Science) & Professor Alec Kirkley (HKU IDS / Department of Urban Planning and Design), in exploring the numerous possibilities in daily life applications of interdisciplinary data science research in making our city smarter and merrier.
According to the post-programme evaluation form, 100% of the respondents agreed that the course instructors “were always well prepared for the class”, and that over 90% of the participants “strongly agreed” that IDSS2401 was helpful in providing them with knowledge and understanding on the underlying concepts surrounding the theme.
Almost 90% of the respondents “strongly agreed” that the course “had met their expectations” and 95% of them would “highly recommend the course to other students”.
Student complimented individual course instructors as “very enthusiastic professor who gives each discussion comprehensive comments, and that “lectures are extremely detailed and engaging”.
The encouraging survey results reflected on the remarkable teaching quality and research expertise of our HKU IDS faculty members who are area experts on the lectures delivered at IDSS2401. The summer programme rendered a wealth of key concepts and applications of AI, with a focus on smart cities, healthcare, and topics in the computational social sciences, which successfully helped them develop a foundation in this exciting area of study, as revealed from their outstanding performances at the group presentations at the end of the course.
Students were not only rewarded with a fruitful HKU experience with multiple cultural activities as well as a sense of comradeship among their study peers over the 2-week interval, but gained a thorough understanding on some fundamentals of data science and machine learning. We hope the summer programme was able to help students fully utilize their summer vacation, and we really look forward to the second SI programme IDSS2402 which shall commence really soon!
